Review #209: Crisis Core - Final Fantasy VII

 Oh, boy...

 Final Fantasy VII is my favorite game of all time, there's not a single thing I hate about it. Well, there wasn't, until "Compilation of Final Fantasy VII" was announced. I loved Final Fantasy VII, imagine me completely elated by the news! Oh, I was younger back then, I didn't know just how badly they would try to milk the game that functioned perfectly as a stand alone story. They would devalue the character development Cloud went through with Advent Children, as well as managing to shoe-horn appearances by Zack and Aerith, not to mention devalue Sephiroth as a villain by bringing him back, just because. Or how about having the TURKS fight a mysterious previous instance of AVALANCE in Before Crisis? No, I am not a fan of everything that happened after Final Fantasy VII, the Final Fantasy games work as stand alone games, the moment they try expanding upon it, be it The After Years, X-2 or XIII-2 and XIII-3... well, the original XIII was terrible, so those don't count, they spit on the original game.

 Here's the first problem with Crisis Core: There's no story to tell. Really, Final Fantasy VII told you everything you needed, or wanted, to know about Sephiroth, about Zack and his relationship with Aerith and Cloud. There was no mysterious events to deepen, nothing that needed fleshing out. There was no story to tell. That means that they had to create a bunch of new characters that are inconsequential, since the main story has been told and this is nothing but filler. We have Genesis, which is Sephiroth but isn't Sephiroth and wears a red coat. The character is insufferable, something bad happens, Genesis is there and quotes LOVELESS(An in-game poem), and you might fight him or not. 90% of his dialogue is made up of LOVELESS quotes. His motivation is as vain as his personality, they probably realized you were gonna hate him, so throughout the entire game you fight his 'copies', so that you can take out your anger on them. Oh, and spoilers, he is forgiven at the end, so that he may save the world one day after Dirge of Cerberus. Because Nomura was a fan of Gackt and had to have him on the game, and of course he had to have a big part on it. They even shoehorn him into events that happened during FFVII's flashbacks. We also have Dr. Hollander, who is Dr. Hojo except he's not. He's a terrible villain, and the game has you chasing after him most of the time. They even tried to make light of it by giving him a 'funny' running animation. Terrible character. Lastly, there's Angeal, the original owner of the Buster Sword and Zack's mentor. This character had a lot of potential, the idea of a mentor was good, he gets some of the best lines in the game, in a game full of great dialogue(Shame the story is so bad!), but it quickly goes down the hole as he 'develops'. His drive is not convincing, and I felt as if they didn't handle the character very well.

 Hilariously enough, they gave the Buster Sword some backstory, and now it's supposed to be Angeal and Zack's legacy. Y'know, the worst weapon that Cloud could equip in FF7? The first Sword you unequipped and were HAPPY to? A weapon weaker than a bat with nails found in the Temple of the Cetra? Yeah, now that Sword that Cloud stops using after a couple of minutes of gameplay is supposed to be a big deal. Hilarious. Now then, my problem isn't with it being a legacy weapon, it works for Zach's story arc and development, my problem is with the ridiculous backstory behind its creation and how it costed Angeal's father's life. They also tried so hard to be Final Fantasy VII, they recreated some scenes, which is terrible. Having old moments remade with this engine, that's good, but recreating scenes but with Zack on Cloud's place is terrible, now we are to believe that Aerith and Zack met in the same way she did with Cloud, with almost the exact same dialogue. Or how they redid FF7's opening but with Zack coming out of the train, but giving it the flimsy excuse of it being a simulation. That's bad. Pandering for the sake of pandering is bad. The story is oddly paced as well, one of the worst chapters having you go from place to place talking with different NPCs, while the main 'narrative' unfolds via the Mails that you get. It's not a good story, and it's badly told. That said, it does have some good moments, like the way Cloud and Zack met, which was handled pretty well, seeing a nice Sephiroth was also interesting, and while the story is so bad... the dialogue is really good. I also really liked Zack, he is so cheery and happy, unlike sassy Cloud. The Ending was excellent as well, it's a shame you have to trudge through the rest of the game to get to it.

 As for the gameplay, where to start with... In the game you play as Zack, d'oh, with the camera centered on his back, though you can rotate it with the shoulder buttons. The game has random encounters, kinda. The places where Random Encounters can take place are scripted, so walking on them will trigger the encounters(It's usually round, wide areas), but you can skip some by walking on the sides of the area, that said, if you are unlucky to finish a battle close to said sides, you might accidentally trigger the same encounter just a few steps after the fact. It's not the best of approaches, but it could've been worse. The game is pretty linear, sometimes you are allowed to walk around through Midgar and unlock Optional Missions or do some side activities, but every time you get shipped outside Midgar, there's little in the way of exploration. Now then, these optional missions can be accepted at any time provided you are standing over a Save Point. These missions are.. dull. There's over 200 missions, and all of the same are the same, you get thrown on some dungeon, need to find a certain monster and kill it. Doing more than 5 of them in a row is a drag. What's worse, it's easy to get frustrated or overleveled, since the way these unlock is terrible. For some reason, you can do some high-level missions at the START of the game, yet by advancing through the game, or talking to NPC's later down the road, you may unlock Easy missions. Why? Why not tie the difficulty of the missions that you unlock to the time and place you are at in the game? I, foolishly, thought to finish all missions, and spent three hours doing missions at the beginning of the game. Needless to say, that left me overleveled for the rest of the game. And the only reason I stopped was because enemies had unavoidable(At the time) Death spells that prevented me from going onwards. It makes no sense to let you attempt these nigh impossible odds so early in the game, but unlock trivial missions, with pitiful rewards(Since you'll be more leveled) later in the game.

 You can equip up to six Materia on Zack, the objects that allow you to use spells, skills or passive power ups, as well as up to four different equipment pieces. Battles play out in real time, you can move Zack around, and select from your Attack, Spells, Skills or Item with the shoulder buttons. It's a bit impractical when moving around through your different possibilities, but you can at least pick the order in which your Materia appears, so that you can have your most commonly used spells closer to Attack(the default option). You can also use Square to try to dodge, or Triangle to block. The combat is... alright, but it can get dull after a while. Zack picks the target nearest to him, and you can't switch between targets, which wasn't much of an issue, maybe because I was overleveled for most of the game, but still annoying. Speaking of annoying, certain large enemies and bosses have unavoidable attacks. Really, they will trigger a cut-scene, there's no build up for you to try to cancel it, and do damage to you, with no chance to avoid or mitigate it. What the hell? I never lost to a boss due to this, but it's certainly possible, what a terrible, terrible design choice. But that's not even the biggest issue with the game...

 That being the randomness of the game. Level ups? Random. Limit Breaks? Random. Leveling up your Materia? Random. Summons? Random. You read that right, all of those are random. During battle, instead of experience points you earn SP, which is used to keep the 3 reels on the upper part of the screen spinning. Depending on the numbers you get, you will get different buffs, like temporal invincibility, or temporal infinite MP. The reels are made up of characters(Like Cloud and Sephiroth) and numbers, if the two characters on the left and ride reel turn up the same(Say, Cloud-Still Spinning-Cloud) you will enter 'Limit Verge', which PAUSES THE GAME in order to give you a close up of the reels. No, you cannot 'cancel' Limit Verge. Now, if the center reel ends on the same characters as the reels on the side, you will execute a Limit Break. Plus, if on Limit verge you get three sevens Zack will level up, while getting two of the same number will level up the Materia on that slot. Yes, it's very possible not to get a single level up on one of your Materia through the entire game. What where they thinking? I heard that there was an invisible XP counter that made it likelier for a level up to happen, but that's a lie. I spent about 30 minutes fighting and finally got a level up... and then got another level up on the very next random encounter. Leveling up is entirely random. It's a terrible game mechanics that sucks the fun out of fighting. Innovation for the sake of Innovation is not a good thing, get that through your thick skulls, Squeenix.

 If there's one front in which Squeenix never disappoints, it's graphics. The game looks gorgeous, the in-game graphics are nothing short of amazing, while the FMV cut-scenes are breathtaking to say the least. Plus, the game employs a lot of familiar enemies and bosses from Final Fantasy VII, seeing them with such a high polygon count made me feel all happy inside. And made me wish for a FFVII remake with these kind of graphics. Who needs HD, just make it look good. The soundtrack borrows a lot of music from FFVII, which is awesome, while the new tunes are a bit more of a mixed bag. I noticed that most of the least notable original tunes are used in the first part of the game, while most of the new music used in the latter half of the game was fantastic. The music used against Sephiroth being particularly good, heck, most of the 'melancholic' and 'depressing' songs were phenomenal. Voice Acting was incredibly good as well.

 Crisis Core is not a good game. It might be a bit better if you haven't played Final Fantasy VII yet, so that the recycled scenes don't feel like a poor attempt to leech of Final Fantasy VII's nostalgia and the new characters don't feel as inconsequential as they do, plus, you can't really compare these rip-offs, Genesis and Hollander, to the originals! Still, even if the story wasn't as bad as it is, the game just can't pull its own weight. The reels were a terrible idea, the optional missions are dull and poorly spread throughout the game and the battles aren't very fun. If you like Final Fantasy VII, stay away.
 4.0 out of 10.