Upon being curious and wanting to play Patapon, I went ahead and downloaded Crisis Core the other day. Upon being curious for many reasons. (see if this is what I believed it to be...a cash cow, or if it really got pushed back for no reason ever.) So far, my view on Crisis Core is in the middle of "meh" and "still milking FFVII for what it is Squeenix?"



Name: Crisis Core (lets leave it at that.)
Release Date: March 25, 2008
Genre: Action RPG
System: Sony PSP

Lets get this straight, I personally like FFVII. It's the constant fanboys/fangirls/sephiroth fans who make me dispise what's even left good about the game. I personally love 8 more than 7 but I also think 7 isn't worth more than 20 bucks. But onto the review...

Crisis Core is a Prequal to the overly hyped RPG Final Fantasy VII for PS1. The game is supposed to tell you Zack's side of the story before 7 and Zack's clone, Cloud, takes his life, sword, girl, all of that. I've heard the game does poorly for telling the story but I'm not that far in (and there's a reason for it which i'll explain.) but I wouldn't be surprised if it's true seeing Advent's Children was....wait. What was it? oh yes, the story was DSG#$RBrw34gw89u349tgurg and the anime short was done good for a anime, too short to really tell anything worthwhile.

So outside of Zack, there's Sephiroth pre Crazy/momma's boy. Genesis, some guy who I don't know anything of outside the fact he's left SOLDIER and his japanese voice is done by the completely utterly sexy Gackt, and Angreal (speeled wrong?), Zack's mentor in a sense and apparently the originator of the Buster Sword (before it's busted up days.), and I guess Cloud who I haven't come across yet. Zack's a 2nd ranked Soldier and dreams of becoming a Hero...and 1st class Soldier. He's your all around goofy yet battle cocky person. that's about all on the story...reason it's so vauge is cause...

MISSIONS. Seriously folks, about majority of the gameplay i've done so far (and i've had about 5 hours deep in.) have been towards these damn missions. Why? cause they're so many of them and everytime you do one, you pretty much unlock another one. That's fine and all but I've only done 2 of the actual story based missions and the rest have been these side quest missions. Not to forget they feel just as tacked on as you'll write them off.


See this? Probably the Hojo Sub Mission after Story Mission #2

These "missions" give you a briefing on what's happening but overall it doesn't pertain to shit. It looks like a shitty little add on story to make you go to some random spot in the middle of midgar nowhere to fight random enemies and a random "boss". Seriously these missions can last to about 2-7 mins at tops and it's cause they pit you in some random area, close off about 80%-90% of the map they show you, and you fight enemies till you reach the end. This does nothing but help you build your level and watch the broken roullete system (which is called DMV? something of the sort.) make you pretty much unstoppable. Speaking of that roullete...

It's pretty much a random non costing roullete that gives you either stat boosts, lvl ups on Zack or Materia, or do some random limit break move. This is a great idea but the constant randomness and the already broken system of the roullete means it'll save your ass more than it should. Whenever a limit break is about to happen, if a enemy attacks, you have auto guard on meaning you'll null any attack. on top of this you'll see faces of important people you know or encounter (so far I have Zack's mentor, Tseng, and Sephiroth. Though I see Aerith and Cloud in a black out.) Although you won't have them all, the silouette faces will still appear in the roullete. This is also how you'll summon your guardians. As randomly it'll take you to the summon roulette during a character roulette. Don't expect to summon all the time either as it's pretty rare (and i'm sure it's because in the beginning, you don't have many summons to hope on.) But my point being here is that the roulette is a nice addition, but makes the gameplay system more broken than it already was. It's constantly random and you'll randomly get stats that pretty much give you infinite MP or make you invincible for awhile.

The actual Gameplay I like but feels rather sluggish. At least when Zack attacks. Mainly because his attacks aren't really a connected combo. Instead of trying to learn the timing of pressing attack, you'll push X, *attack*, and Zack kinda has a second standby before he attacks again. I'm not sure if Squeenix intended this to be a combo attack or to make it like so so it could be easier to mix up the attacking with magic or other abilities. Either way it feels weird. You have a certain amount of Materia (yes it returns.) and accessories you can equip. Though Materia isn't leveled the same as in 7. It's pretty much luck on the Roulette to level it up. The system is pretty good for a action RPG but at times, it just feels like you're waaaaay too overpowered thanks to the roulette and already taking insane damage from the start. Not to mention it's easy as hell to get Criticals as you just have to go behind an enemy and attack. Outside of Bosses, this is way too easy and makes fights faster than they should.

moving on to the CG cuts, they're beautiful. It seems Squeenix never disappoints in this department but it shows what this pushback was really for everything but the story and gameplay. Squeenix continues to amaze with the Summon cutscene attacks and the story cutscenes.

Sound....well don't expect anything of FFVII calibur cause so far I haven't seen anything big. At least so far I can't tell. Missions seem to prevent me from caring about anything else cause i'm too busy fighting those same enemies in the same random places that are randomly shuffling around.

Overall folks, this game's a hit or miss for any FF fan. I assume most FFVII fanatics bought this without hesitation but I really question how much more can Squeenix (or rather Squaresoft.) milk FFVII to the point even the fanboys/fangirls won't care? I had somewhat high hopes for this game as I was truly interested in Zack more than Cloud, but for the constant pushbacks this got, it still feels like complete nonsense. Course I wouldn't completely know yet because 4hrs and 30mins of the game have mostly been missions. the other 30 went towards maybe the main 2 missions and tutorials. Personally I wouldn't waste 40 bucks (or even a penny.) towards this since it's Square just trying to milk out more of the FFVII fame. If you have a homebrewed PSP (and seriously at this point in the PSPs life, you should.) find the ISO, download it, and make 20 bucks go to something like Patapon or Crush.