Final Fantasy VII Crisis Core Review

You ever wondered how Cloud became the hero he is today? How about what exactly lead to Sephiroth becoming so evil? If you have ever played the 1997 Final Fantasy 7 which debuted on the PS1 system then all these questions are answered, but did you ever find out where it all began? Well you will get your chance to find out with this review of Final Fantasy VII Crisis Core.

It all starts off with you as Zack Fair being a cocky young SOLDIER 2nd class operative working under the wing of Angeal 1st class learnign the trade it seems. You begin right off the back into an action sequence fighting Wutai agents who are Shinra Guards in disquise, supposedly. After you depart from fighting the low level enemies you face off against a Behemot monster which can be easily disposed of. Being Zack he enjoys his little victory until low and behold Sephiroth appears with intent to Kill you! The scene turns in to a CGI movie battle which of course Zack has no chance and gets saved by Angeal, but guess what ? It is all just a VR mission, a siimulation for young Zacks training if he ever wants to be a 1st class SOLDIER.

The story becomes more deep when you are told that some SOLDIER operatives have gone missing including a first class named "Genesis". You begin to realize like with every corporation there are some scandals and shady elements going on that make you question things during the game, especially when the rebels are asking for your assistance. From here on out you are going on missions to prove yourself in being promoted to the first class ranks.

There are some interesting elements for this prequel for the PSP. The game play is an action based that has a new feature called "Digital Mind Wave" or DMW. this system is in a form of a slot machine which boost your ability with "power up" or "Power Surge' that activates when the pictures line up to match and random number sequences. If the pictures match and numbers match as well then you get an added bonus. This system feeds off of SP that you gain during battle so the slots stay constant when you fight. During that time you have full control over Zack since this is an action RPG. I have to say that I perfer the action based combat instead of turn based, makes things more exciting then having to wait to get hit to hit back.

The buttons are simple to learn since you are using only five during combat. The shoulder buttons act as your scroll for the actions on the right hand corner of the screen. That area is where you can choose from sword attack, materia magic or items. I rather enjoyed that then having to go into a drop down menu or this eliminates worrying about a second analog stick since you would use it to go through a menu like that. The X button acts as your action, Square is for dodging enemy attacks and triangle is your block button which is very useful, but doubt many would bother using it (points to me). the button sequence changes once outside of the action area. Your triangle button now changes to a menu option where you can go into your PDA (thats how I see it). Inside there you can check e-mails from Lazard and refresh your memory from the tutorials, shop, check equipment, Materia, DMW acquired and Missions. Your square button changes the screen to a map where you can see your next destination.

The action within the game is not too bad, you will be able to enjoy a lot of random battles which are not boring since it is action based. What I am really impressed about is not having to worry about where the next save point is. They kindly provide enough save points through out the areas without worrying about going on a long fight scene and dying, which causes you to start over again. Another impressive note is the graphics in the game, they mimic PS2 graphics. I am very impressed with the cutscenese and in game cinemas that are in the game.

I mentioned some of the returning cast members of the old story, but you will get the chance of meeting a whole lot more especially young Yuffie. The List of characters are as followed; Cloud Strife, Aerith Gainsborough, Tifa Lockhart, Yuffie Kisaragi, Cait Sith. members of the Turks show up, Tseng, Reno and Rude. Also to show up is Professor Hojo, Jenova, Weiss, Nero, and Vincent Valentine. The faces to show themselves are Angeal, Genesis, Lazard and Professor Hollander. Very nice line up if you ask me.

This is a disclaimer for the fan boys out there of the Final Fantasy series. Even though I am not as hardcore as most of you I am going to be very fair and thorough when it comes to the bad areas of the game. Please do not attempt to send a summon at me or throw elixirs at my direction, besides I will go Bankai on yea with my Zengetsu.

The bad elements of the game are as followed. You have to deal with cutscenese that can not be skipped, especially after dealing with a battle and getting defeated. You do not want to go through the same cutscene (no matter how cool it looks) over again and again without an option to skip it. I have talked to many and I do agree that the dubbing for the characters is bad but not enough to make me want to mute the whole thing entirely. I think the English voice fits well with Zack and the others, but it is kind of annoying. I do believe that they should give you the option of Japanese voices and English options to stop the massive people from getting annoyed with the voice acting or write better dialoge not that hard. Even though it is an action RPG it has the button mashing element too it with no real combat skills to learn. Later on you develop a bit more magic and equipment but a more complicated fighting system would be nice. Since the analog is used to control the character how about using directions to do different attack moves.

Another annoying factor is that you can't choose what special moves too use when you are the power breaks. They are chosen randomly. In my opinion it takes the strategy out of the game. Take that into consideration when you are expecting to choose your special finishing moves.

Time to summorize everything up for you materia induced gamers. You have a story line that leads up to the sequel which came out ten years ago, great graphics mixed in with a decent amount of gameplay. The storyline is bit known to people already, however fills up some holes that people didn't know. The gameplay does get repetative over time and the the cutscences you have to sit through even though they are great, will get boring after a while when you have to watch them over and over again. All right so my final verdict on Final Fantasy VII Crisis Core for the PSP a 3.5 out of 5. Stay frosty gamers!