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Crisis Core: Final Fantasy 7 Review This game is a roller coaster of awesome and not. To say I was skeptical of this game is an understatement since I've yet to really like any of the sequels or prequels to any Final Fantasy title, especially Final Fantasy 7. Advent Children was...okay. Dirge of Cerberus was...okay. And as it turns out, Crisis Core is...okay, too. Most elements of the game are fun, then dull or over-complicated, then fun again, then probably ending on bad. The story does it, the ability system does it, side-quests do it, it's just kinda strange. Let's start with the story. This is of course the prequel to Final Fantasy 7 that explores the backstory of the small character Zack, who was involved with Sephiroth in the past and was related to the crisis at Nibelheim. Prequels are always difficult because you know how they end, so keeping suspense and mystery involved is hard. And in the case of a prequel where the entire story is included within the game itself, well, you can see why I was skeptical. So how does this game keep from repeating everything? They invent a whole new backstory about experiments and people with one wing that aren't Sephiroth and stupid apples.
At first, the invention was all good and made sense. It starts with Zack working with SOLDIER as a 2nd Class under a 1st Class named Angeal. It's interesting for awhile when it is about Zack's rise to 1st Class. Then it hits this turn when it becomes all about Angeal and another SOLDIER 1st Class that had gone rogue named Genesis. To say it's hard to explain this without giving away the plots to Crisis Core AND Final Fantasy 7 is an understatement. Let's just say "ditto." See, "ditto" sums up everything related to the plot of Crisis Core. If it happened in Final Fantasy 7, it happened here. I wish I was joking. For instance, I will give a mini-spoiler to both to say that Aeris dates Zack. Of course, this was back when she called herself Aerith, but still, she did. If you paid attention in Final Fantasy 7, then you already knew this. What you didn't know unless you've played both is that she meets both in the exact. Same. Way. What way? Oh, you know, they fall through the roof of her church and land on her flowers.
Maybe some people are really into parallel plots, but it's way too much. One thing is a coincidence, all things is annoying. Not only does the plot parallel, but apparently Zack did everything in the past. At one point, you name the Seventh Heaven, Tifa's bar. I just...don't get why they need to include that kind of stuff. It feels like Zack founded all of Midgar. Every idea in the city was his. Very much not my thing. The beginning of the plot is okay, then it gets boring, then it's kind of interesting, then it drops off the face of the planet. And finally, you get to the Nibelheim stuff. I must say, this was a huge letdown. I don't normally like to talk about the later parts of the game, so I'll be as vague as possible, but Nibelheim is huge. When we get the mission to go out there, I'm pumped. I'm ready to see all the scenes you see in the flashback of Final Fantasy 7 and see how they spin the new plot into it all. But then, the game does this insane thing. It skips. Parts of Nibelheim aren't even shown, probably because they assume you know it all. But...this is a monumental scene! It is the building point for the entire game! And for one part, they just show a few screenshots of the events happening. And then, they change some of what happened. I dunno. It was a disappointment. From what I've heard, the game was initially going to feature a lot more of Cloud and Zack and the events between Nibelheim and Final Fantasy 7's introduction, but it was cut due to UMD limits. To which I say:
I don't care at all about Genesis and Angeal. Not only "don't care about them much," but no, not at all. Genesis never says anything interesting and while Angeal is kind of a nice guy and fun character, he's pointless in the grand scheme of things. This game missed the point of itself. That's enough plot. How about the gameplay? Well, it's pretty good. You can run around, choose targets (even though it's kinda awkward), roll to dodge, block, dash, and choose magics that you essentially hotkey to use. It's actually pretty fun.
And occasionally, these reels in the corner will line up and a voice saying "Modulating Phase" will pop up. When it happens, if you get three of the same icons, then Zack will do a special attack kind of mimicking a Limit Break.
There are also numbers 1-7 that come up randomly. This is the ability system of the game. Eventually, you get six materia slots and if you get multiples of the same number, then that materia levels up. For instance, if "Cure" is in the first slot and you get two 1's, then Cure will gain a level. If you get three 1's, it'll actually gain two levels. And if you get three 7's, you gain a level.
I'm not really sure what to say about the random level-ups. At first, I thought it was fine. My materia was leveling up and I like the probability aspect like how the more mastered materia you keep on, the lower the chance of any benefits from lining up the numbers. Plus, the 777 level-up is obviously not random. It happens much too often. So...not too bad. But then, after about ten hours when you're just never getting any friggin 1's, you start to get annoyed. Really annoyed.
The other downside to this is how awkward your combat is with this modulated phases. I get the feeling that it was an attempt to make combat less jerky. There's a good flow. Combat starts, an annoying voice says "Initiate Combat Phase," and you start the fight. Then, when it's over, the annoying voice says "End Combat Phase," then you continue to run around. It's pretty seemless with no "Gained 400 EXP! 20 AP! You gained a level! Cure at level 4!" and all that jazz, but the problem is that they put it right in the friggin middle of your friggin com--
--bat. The Modulating Phase is really frigging annoying oh my goodness! You know how the last little bit has been really awkward to read? That's nothing compared to how it actually works! It interrupts your game! You're working this great strategy to avoid a monster and--bam!
Modulating FRIGGIN Phase! And then, oh look, 3 Tsengs have aligned, so now I have to watch Zack yet again. "I'm trying, I'm trying!" Helicopter comes in! Guns guns guns. Boom! It takes up a lot of time and interrupts the game. Yeah, sometimes it's helpful, but sometimes it ruins everything! I'm gonna exclamation all over the place because seriously, it was a terrible decision to use this! Who is so stupid that they decided it'd be a good idea to do this all the damn time!? And seriously, it ruins the difficulty. I'm sorry, but I don't play games just to win. If it isn't hard, then it isn't worth playing. I kinda feel like I'm the president and I've got some secret service helping me play Candy Land.
The materia system is, like all else, good and bad. There's a system for mastering materia, then fusing it with other materia to create new materia. It's actually a neat system that I really like. Problem is, you need a friggin book to know what combinations you can make and how many there are and all that. We have the internet now, so that's not a huge problem, but I always try to hold games to their own. I have a firm belief that you should be able to figure everything out in a video game without the help of the internet, but this is just so much luck that it'd be hard to do. You could, but it'd take you countless hours. The game itself is pretty short, so let's talk Missions. Missions are sidequests that you can do from any save point. Zack is teleported to a location where he needs to find an enemy or multiple enemies and destroy them. They're different from normal enemies because these ones actually appear on the map, while others appear randomly. At first, Missions were kinda neat. And then, after doing about 20 of them, I noticed something. My progress for missions said "5%." But...that can't be right. Twenty missions and it's only five percent? Yes, there are an assload of missions. And what's worse: they're boring. You run around fighting. That's it. I tried to do them as I went along, thinking they were somehow related to the progress of the game, but they aren't. You finish one and another pops up. It's seemingly endless. I started the game by doing a bunch, then realized they weren't going away and advanced the plot, only to find that the game was now simple because I was apparently several levels ahead of where I needed to be.
And....y'know, aside from a few random mini-games, that about covers the entire game. It's pretty short. I completed about forty percent of the missions and still clocked in at about twenty hours for the whole game. Oh, and I have this tendency to leave my PSP on and forget about it, so that probably added about an hour. Point is, the game is short if you don't do missions and the missions are too endless to care about. You get some amazing rewards and I know missions are trying to be an after-dungeon, but there are still way too many. The game was so fun when I first started. I got my new PSP and this was the game of all of them that I was really getting into, but it just isn't that good. I really like Zack and even Cloud in this game. Zack is an awesome main character, but he's in a dud of a game. They should've focused on characters and ideas that already existed instead of inventing their own cast and trying to pull us in by claiming it is the backstory. No, it isn't. In fact, I now have to block most of this from my mind to keep from confusing it with the real plot. Sorry, game. You really did try... I guess... MODULATING PHASE!
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