OLD: Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core review
Enough’s enough, Square-Enix. The horse has been dead for a decade now, stop flogging it. Just do what 10 million gamers demand and remake Final Fantasy VII; stop taunting us with more movies, games, action figures and limited edition Aeris-branded knickers before we get sick of waiting. You’re remaking everything else in your back catalogue and even producing spin-offs for games that aren’t out yet, so why not your most beloved game?
All that’s beside the point though, as Square’s fourth revisit to the world of Gaia has finally landed on the PSP in Europe. Crisis Core is a prequel to VII, taking place seven years before the events of the PSone game – unlike the disappointing Dirge of Cerberus or the graphically splendiferous Advent Children, but slightly before the Japan-only mobile phone prequel, Before Crisis. That’s quite a lot of Final Fantasy VII already, but is Crisis Core a truly useful and worthwhile addition to the series?
Set seven years before the events of the original game, Crisis Core revolves around the antics of the sadly doomed Zack Fair, 2nd class member of SOLDIER and spiky black-haired friend that haunted Cloud during Final Fantasy VII. Guided by his mentor Angeal (the original owner of the Cloud’s Buster Sword), Zack’s aiming to become a 1st and a true hero, and he gets a chance to prove himself when Shinra dispatches SOLDIER to quell the continent of Wutai’s rebellion.
Unfortunately, the operation goes awry when one of the 1sts, the red-haired crackpot Genesis (modelled on J-Pop legend Gackt) goes rogue and takes a number of deserters with him. It’s not long before Angeal vanishes too, and it’s up to Zack and a number of old friends – Cloud, Tseng, Aeris and even loveable lunatic Sephiroth – to find out what Genesis is up to, and stop him before things get even worse.
Smartly, despite the overwhelmingly complex storylines wrapped around the game’s narrative, Square has chosen to fully embrace the PSP’s strengths and weaknesses. The game is peppered with Advent Children-quality CGI cut-scenes, as well as many fully-voiced in-game sequences, showing off the PSP’s remarkable graphical and auditory oomph – even if most of the in-game environments are bland, samey and small, they still manage to look nice enough.
Where the PSP is truly catered for is in the simplicity and speed of the combat: they’ve literally rewritten the rulebook to perfect the ultimate portable RPG system. When Zack enters into a random battle (alone sadly: Crisis Core has no party system), the fights take place in real-time: you have to move, dodge and block for yourself. At first, simply hacking away at the attack button and running round your enemy to get in a critical hit might make Crisis Core feel like an action game, but the tactical element still plays its part. Actions are mapped to a menu which can be navigated through the shoulder buttons, from casting a material to using all manner of items, but mostly you’ll just be hammering the X button to queue up attacks as you run round your enemies, trying to flip them over to hit their weak spot for massive damage.
The speed and involvement of the battles are perfect for the handheld, as they’re fast-paced and involving, rather than long and drawn out. There are plenty of lengthier bouts, especially later on, but you certainly won’t be spending hours on complex boss battles as your PSP drains lithium-ion faster than Amy Winehouse can clean out a crack-den. The only problem is that this can sometimes make the game a tad easy, especially for the tons of optional side missions, which can be accessed, strangely, through save points.
The strange thing about the combat is that it’s dominated by a disturbingly random and always rolling slot machine. Called the DMW (Digital Mind Wave, apparently), it’s essentially a Japanese pachinko machine armed with numbers and characters you meet during the game. When it stops, there are plenty of random possibilities, with different combinations of numbers and matching characters causing everything from free mana or agility for a period of time to levelling up Zack and his material skills, and even summons.
It’s all incredibly fluid and unique: no battle will ever be the same, and you might find yourself saved by the numbers, while other times you’ll curse as the reels just keep on rolling when you need to be able to pull off a limit break attack on a particularly nasty boss. It’s so random that you can’t really call it a good or bad system: the levelling up experience system is in there somewhere and it works, but with no way of judging what’s going to happen the only thing you can rely on is pure dumb luck.
Yet despite this, Crisis Core is still a fantastic game to play. Once you’re able to fathom the surprising depth of the combat and even Zack’s customisation, it becomes a totally engrossing and absorbing experience, even though there’s no party system and the levelling system is totally nonsensical: the fact that you’re still able to have an effect on Zack’s abilities is really quite remarkable.
By the game’s heart-wrenching finale, Crisis Core will have easily proved itself to be the pinnacle of fan-service until J.K. Rowling resorts to writing Harry and Ron slash fiction. Crisis Core has everything a Final Fantasy VII fan would ever want: reams of backstory and exposition about Zack, hours of fun gaming in a familiar universe for a handheld console that causes horrible hand cramps, and most importantly of all, it gives a decent excuse for everyone to revisit Midgar.
Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII might not be a must-have for everyone (anyone who is unaware of the magnificence of the Knights of the Round Table summon or breeding a certain colour of Chocobo might have some trouble understanding the story), but everyone who was there for Aeris’ final moments, can truly understand what goes on in Advent Children, or just loves a good RPG, this is more than enough reason to pick up and dust off your PSP.
Scores:
Gameplay: 8
Presentation: 10
Value: 9
Mainstream Appeal: 8
Overall: 8.7
