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Review: Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII
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Posted by Genemech 114 days ago
 
Released: March 25th, 2008 (NA)
OK, everyone, here it is, the review you’ve been waiting for. It’s been 3 years since the PSP came out, and it’s been 10 years since Final Fantasy VII came out. Ultimately, FF7’s rightful prequel hit’s the shelves today.
Right off the bat, I finished this game on March 24th, 2008 within 18 hours and 21 minutes. I finished 26% of the optional missions and have a few characters unlocked for summons.
Presentation: 10
As soon as you start the game, the introduction is amazing, very reminiscent of FF7. It does a great job in bringing you back into the FF7 universe. Afterwards, the cut scenes are all well done and so are all the menu’s effects and all sorts of these things. A special mention is the CGI cut scenes. There are only about 10 of them or so for the main story and 6 or 7 of them are for the summons, and they are all on par with Advent Children style graphics. But most importantly, Sephiroth’s theme song, enough said…
Graphics: 10
I’d give the graphics grade about a 15 or so, but the scale doesn’t go that high. I played most of the game on the TV and this is hands down the best looking game on the PSP. Better than Tekken and God of War. As a matter of fact, the graphics are on par with well made PS2 games. That’s right. They’re THAT good!
Everyone has 3 types of faces; text speech faces (where the mouth just moves up and down, while you read text), voiced faces (where everyone’s face has emotion and synced to their voice), and their CGI face (this is for only a few characters, and simply, it’s just the CGI cutscenes). The effects from spells, attacks, enemies, land textures, varied textures are all in high detail and all well done. The summons are always a treat to watch as well. Regardless of how underpowered they actually are when attacking a single enemy, more on that in the gameplay. But that’s graphics just on the TV, if you play it on the PSP, it will be even sharper due to the standard resolution the game is suppose to be played on.
If you’re going to get a game just for graphics and/or story, this is the only game you should get.
Sound: 9
All of the major characters have their own voices and speak very well. The special effects of spells, attacks, environmental music and battle music are all high quality and well done. But the battle music is over used, because there is only about 1 track for it. This is not necessarily bad, because the heavy metal riffs really fit the feel of the game and the battle, but it MAY get annoying. Especially when the dreaded random battle ends and then you take just 2 steps (literally) and start another battle, the battle music doesn’t even get a chance to fade out. Best of all, there is more than 1 footstep sound… Your footsteps change depending on your environment. Actually, I lied, best of all: Sephiroth’s Theme. The only reason I gave the sound grade a 9 is because the voiceovers are almost random at times. I would be reading text, text, text, and then a character would speak 1 or 2 lines of dialogue followed by text, text, and some more text.
Gameplay: 7
Square Enix tried something with this type of gameplay, and it worked just not as well as it should have. In its core, the gameplay of Crisis Core is a mix between Kingdom Hearts, classic Final Fantasy turn base, and a retarded roulette. OK, let’s get the good out of the way; its fun to run around freely, to check out the monsters and enemies from every side and then critically hit them right in there bum. You can customize your battle strategy with different skills and materia, and even customize materia via fusion, but only before battle. This is just when you fight, otherwise, there’s some variety in the game. Along with the classic “Run there, talk to this person, run there, FIGHT, cutscene, dialogue, talk to this person, FIGHT, run there, item collection, customize.” I think I broke down the whole game right there. Well, there is a variety like sniping patrols to get away from *spoiler* cutting up artillery shells to protect *spoiler* from the fights *spoiler* on a rail while trying not to fall off, and a big part is doing the annoying as hell Missions.
Now the bad: Right away, the most annoying thing I’ve found was the Missions, 90% of them are EXACTLY THE SAME. To start a mission, go to any save point and open your main menu, and try to enjoy. In said, 90% of them you have to move from point A to point B (while fighting random battles of course) to get to a monster, which you fight, and try to win. Unfortunately, there are probably about 150+ missions… I only did 26% of them. I couldn’t take it anymore. What’s worse, you have to do the missions so you can unlock more summons, which really, really disappointed me because I only unlocked Odin, Ifrit, and Bahamut summon in that 26%. Otherwise, you unlock items and special summons, including Chocobo summon (which I unlocked), and Cactuar summon, etc. So it’s possible to stay at one save point for hours, over power yourself and feel a little unchallenged in the story and vice versa. Worst of all, when you start a new game with your prior level, your mission percentage restarts, so I was so annoyed, I didn’t even try to continue my New Game Plus.
Next; when you fight, you can equip a total of 6 materia, plus the Attack option and Item option which you select between with the Left and Right triggers and use with X. The targeting is simple, whoever you look at, you target. Square is dodge and Triangle is block. It’s all real time just like Kingdom hearts, sounds great right? Don’t be fooled. When you select an option to use, Zack will use it and there’s no way of canceling it without repercussions. For example: When you’re on the other side of the battle and you press the attack button, he will run towards the enemy and attack, regardless of what happens, but you can tap the square button to dodge and cancel, but you lose Action Points. But that can be over looked, what can’t be overlooked is the lack of selection. The materia you equip can be anything, status inducing, attack, magic, etc. You can’t equip status changing materia without using slots. So yes, it adds strategy but doesn’t give you too wide of a selection.
But look, all that I just said can be overlooked easily and it pales in comparison to the next problem, the DMW, the roulette in the upper left corner of the screen. It’s the worst thing Square Enix has ever made, worse than Final Fantasy X-2 and worse than Kingdom Heart’s story (That’s right, I said it). It has roulette with characters and numbers. If you get a certain number in a certain place, etc., you get a special status bonus, like “No Magic Point Cost the entire battle” or “All hits are Critical” or “Invincible.” But when two of the 3 pictures line up, you go into the “Modulating Phase” where it basically plays roulette again, but the bonuses are bigger. Depending on what numbers you get, you level up or your material skills level up and if you get 3 of the same character’s picture, you use their special move. They’re fun to watch, but can’t be skipped… That’s right, you level up at random, and I leveled up 4 times in one simple random battle. And AT RANDOM the “Modulating Phase” roulette may switch from Main Character pictures, which give you simple, special attacks, to Summon pictures, which may do a Summoned attack that can be skipped, or to Special Character pictures, which may do a Special Character Summon attack like the “Chocobo stomp”.
I know what you’re thinking, “But Gene, that doesn’t sound bad at all! What’s the matter with you?!” Oh, but it IS bad. At one point in the game, I had to fight a bunch of soldiers where they’d respawn when I kill a group and the modulating phase would turn on when I killed said group. I’d get 3 char pictures or even a summon right in mid respawn and waste an attack. Another annoying thing about it is when I have full HP, 9999/9999, and I get Aerith’s special to heal me for another 9999, what a waste. At one point, the DMW summoned Bahamut’s Mega Flare on a low level soldier who’s stunned, poisoned, silenced and with like 100hp. Bahamut does 8000 damage.
The summons are great when there’s a bunch of people, but they still seem underpowered at times. At one point in the game, somewhere around the middle to the end, I found an attack which costs me only 6 AP points (which isn’t a lot) and does 9999 Critical damage and staggers the enemy each time. I beat the last 4 to 5 bosses with that attack and barely got hurt in the process. Square Enix really, really screwed up with the materia customization, missions and the DMW.
Other than that, you go to the store and buy the game, RIGHT NOW! Regardless of its gameplay problems, Crisis Core is just worth it for the story and graphics.
Lasting Appeal: 9
If you take your time, the story is about 20 hours, plus another 2-6 hours from those disgusting missions and then that ALL OVER AGAIN in the New Game Plus. So yeah, it’s pretty long. I wouldn’t be surprised that when you see Cloud take Zack’s *spoiler* at the end, you wouldn’t start it over again.
Final Word: 45/50 Near Perfect!
Look, technically, there’s actually nothing wrong with the game, it’s actually perfect. But because of Square Enix’s bad decision with the battle system and the other problems I ranted about. It turned out to be “Near Perfect.” This shouldn’t deter you from buying it, not at all. The problems are actually pretty minor compared to the magnitude of the intense storytelling this game has.
Enjoy it, please. Aren’t you glad I didn’t spoil anything by putting *spoiler*?
Posted by Genemech 114 days ago
Released: March 25th, 2008 (NA)
OK, everyone, here it is, the review you’ve been waiting for. It’s been 3 years since the PSP came out, and it’s been 10 years since Final Fantasy VII came out. Ultimately, FF7’s rightful prequel hit’s the shelves today.
Right off the bat, I finished this game on March 24th, 2008 within 18 hours and 21 minutes. I finished 26% of the optional missions and have a few characters unlocked for summons.
Presentation: 10
As soon as you start the game, the introduction is amazing, very reminiscent of FF7. It does a great job in bringing you back into the FF7 universe. Afterwards, the cut scenes are all well done and so are all the menu’s effects and all sorts of these things. A special mention is the CGI cut scenes. There are only about 10 of them or so for the main story and 6 or 7 of them are for the summons, and they are all on par with Advent Children style graphics. But most importantly, Sephiroth’s theme song, enough said…
Graphics: 10
I’d give the graphics grade about a 15 or so, but the scale doesn’t go that high. I played most of the game on the TV and this is hands down the best looking game on the PSP. Better than Tekken and God of War. As a matter of fact, the graphics are on par with well made PS2 games. That’s right. They’re THAT good!
Everyone has 3 types of faces; text speech faces (where the mouth just moves up and down, while you read text), voiced faces (where everyone’s face has emotion and synced to their voice), and their CGI face (this is for only a few characters, and simply, it’s just the CGI cutscenes). The effects from spells, attacks, enemies, land textures, varied textures are all in high detail and all well done. The summons are always a treat to watch as well. Regardless of how underpowered they actually are when attacking a single enemy, more on that in the gameplay. But that’s graphics just on the TV, if you play it on the PSP, it will be even sharper due to the standard resolution the game is suppose to be played on.
If you’re going to get a game just for graphics and/or story, this is the only game you should get.
Sound: 9
All of the major characters have their own voices and speak very well. The special effects of spells, attacks, environmental music and battle music are all high quality and well done. But the battle music is over used, because there is only about 1 track for it. This is not necessarily bad, because the heavy metal riffs really fit the feel of the game and the battle, but it MAY get annoying. Especially when the dreaded random battle ends and then you take just 2 steps (literally) and start another battle, the battle music doesn’t even get a chance to fade out. Best of all, there is more than 1 footstep sound… Your footsteps change depending on your environment. Actually, I lied, best of all: Sephiroth’s Theme. The only reason I gave the sound grade a 9 is because the voiceovers are almost random at times. I would be reading text, text, text, and then a character would speak 1 or 2 lines of dialogue followed by text, text, and some more text.
Gameplay: 7
Square Enix tried something with this type of gameplay, and it worked just not as well as it should have. In its core, the gameplay of Crisis Core is a mix between Kingdom Hearts, classic Final Fantasy turn base, and a retarded roulette. OK, let’s get the good out of the way; its fun to run around freely, to check out the monsters and enemies from every side and then critically hit them right in there bum. You can customize your battle strategy with different skills and materia, and even customize materia via fusion, but only before battle. This is just when you fight, otherwise, there’s some variety in the game. Along with the classic “Run there, talk to this person, run there, FIGHT, cutscene, dialogue, talk to this person, FIGHT, run there, item collection, customize.” I think I broke down the whole game right there. Well, there is a variety like sniping patrols to get away from *spoiler* cutting up artillery shells to protect *spoiler* from the fights *spoiler* on a rail while trying not to fall off, and a big part is doing the annoying as hell Missions.
Now the bad: Right away, the most annoying thing I’ve found was the Missions, 90% of them are EXACTLY THE SAME. To start a mission, go to any save point and open your main menu, and try to enjoy. In said, 90% of them you have to move from point A to point B (while fighting random battles of course) to get to a monster, which you fight, and try to win. Unfortunately, there are probably about 150+ missions… I only did 26% of them. I couldn’t take it anymore. What’s worse, you have to do the missions so you can unlock more summons, which really, really disappointed me because I only unlocked Odin, Ifrit, and Bahamut summon in that 26%. Otherwise, you unlock items and special summons, including Chocobo summon (which I unlocked), and Cactuar summon, etc. So it’s possible to stay at one save point for hours, over power yourself and feel a little unchallenged in the story and vice versa. Worst of all, when you start a new game with your prior level, your mission percentage restarts, so I was so annoyed, I didn’t even try to continue my New Game Plus.
Next; when you fight, you can equip a total of 6 materia, plus the Attack option and Item option which you select between with the Left and Right triggers and use with X. The targeting is simple, whoever you look at, you target. Square is dodge and Triangle is block. It’s all real time just like Kingdom hearts, sounds great right? Don’t be fooled. When you select an option to use, Zack will use it and there’s no way of canceling it without repercussions. For example: When you’re on the other side of the battle and you press the attack button, he will run towards the enemy and attack, regardless of what happens, but you can tap the square button to dodge and cancel, but you lose Action Points. But that can be over looked, what can’t be overlooked is the lack of selection. The materia you equip can be anything, status inducing, attack, magic, etc. You can’t equip status changing materia without using slots. So yes, it adds strategy but doesn’t give you too wide of a selection.
But look, all that I just said can be overlooked easily and it pales in comparison to the next problem, the DMW, the roulette in the upper left corner of the screen. It’s the worst thing Square Enix has ever made, worse than Final Fantasy X-2 and worse than Kingdom Heart’s story (That’s right, I said it). It has roulette with characters and numbers. If you get a certain number in a certain place, etc., you get a special status bonus, like “No Magic Point Cost the entire battle” or “All hits are Critical” or “Invincible.” But when two of the 3 pictures line up, you go into the “Modulating Phase” where it basically plays roulette again, but the bonuses are bigger. Depending on what numbers you get, you level up or your material skills level up and if you get 3 of the same character’s picture, you use their special move. They’re fun to watch, but can’t be skipped… That’s right, you level up at random, and I leveled up 4 times in one simple random battle. And AT RANDOM the “Modulating Phase” roulette may switch from Main Character pictures, which give you simple, special attacks, to Summon pictures, which may do a Summoned attack that can be skipped, or to Special Character pictures, which may do a Special Character Summon attack like the “Chocobo stomp”.
I know what you’re thinking, “But Gene, that doesn’t sound bad at all! What’s the matter with you?!” Oh, but it IS bad. At one point in the game, I had to fight a bunch of soldiers where they’d respawn when I kill a group and the modulating phase would turn on when I killed said group. I’d get 3 char pictures or even a summon right in mid respawn and waste an attack. Another annoying thing about it is when I have full HP, 9999/9999, and I get Aerith’s special to heal me for another 9999, what a waste. At one point, the DMW summoned Bahamut’s Mega Flare on a low level soldier who’s stunned, poisoned, silenced and with like 100hp. Bahamut does 8000 damage.
The summons are great when there’s a bunch of people, but they still seem underpowered at times. At one point in the game, somewhere around the middle to the end, I found an attack which costs me only 6 AP points (which isn’t a lot) and does 9999 Critical damage and staggers the enemy each time. I beat the last 4 to 5 bosses with that attack and barely got hurt in the process. Square Enix really, really screwed up with the materia customization, missions and the DMW.
Other than that, you go to the store and buy the game, RIGHT NOW! Regardless of its gameplay problems, Crisis Core is just worth it for the story and graphics.
Lasting Appeal: 9
If you take your time, the story is about 20 hours, plus another 2-6 hours from those disgusting missions and then that ALL OVER AGAIN in the New Game Plus. So yeah, it’s pretty long. I wouldn’t be surprised that when you see Cloud take Zack’s *spoiler* at the end, you wouldn’t start it over again.
Final Word: 45/50 Near Perfect!
Look, technically, there’s actually nothing wrong with the game, it’s actually perfect. But because of Square Enix’s bad decision with the battle system and the other problems I ranted about. It turned out to be “Near Perfect.” This shouldn’t deter you from buying it, not at all. The problems are actually pretty minor compared to the magnitude of the intense storytelling this game has.
Enjoy it, please. Aren’t you glad I didn’t spoil anything by putting *spoiler*?
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1. No cursing or swear words: Use proper language to express yourself.
2. No flooding or spamming the comment system, abuse will result in a ban.
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114 days ago
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1
I tend to agree with you on a lot of things and I do hate how if there is only one enemy left and all you need to do is cut down his 1HP and go to attack, the DMW kicks in. Man it’s such a waste but for me it kinda triggers a lot so I guess it’s not a total loss. I was heavily impressed with the graphics of this game because let’s face it, this is the only game to actually use the PSP’s graphics the way it’s suppose to be. I mean the PSP is kinda like a portable PS2 and the best Sony has done was make games with Advance PS1 graphics so far. Not to mention the sound on this is insanely great, although the battle music is annoying after about 100 times, however I like the Boss Music, but it doesn’t last too long in my battles lol. I actually had a whole review on this myself but haven’t finished it yet. I wrote it the night I got the game, so I suppose it’s worthless now eh? Well anyway I liked the battle system in this game, far better than I thought it would be. I thought it would have been turned based or somthing along those lines, which would have made me reconsider buying the game all together...yes I know practically all FF games are turned based, but I mean how much of that can you stand? I still pop in FFVIII and Eternal Arcadia once in a while.
I’ll be honest I was never a FFVII fan, I loved FFVIII. However after watching FFVII Last Order, FFVII Advent Children and playing FFVII Dirge of Cerberus it got me wondering if I was wrong to dislike it. Playing this game was the last straw on the camels back, I popped FFVII on my PSP and had another go at it, turns out I was wrong. So this game made me a fan of FFVII. Now normally I don’t like it when a predicessor is better than the original due to technology, I feel the final one should be the best of all*. In this case I feel I can make an exception.
*What I mean is that a new game that takes place before the original’s storyline I feel should not play better or in anyway become something that can out trump the original. In essence FFVII Crisis Core should not be Better than FFVII, however in this particular case I will let it slide seeing as how I liked it so much.
PS:What about the KH Story don’t you like?
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113 days ago
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2
!!! How did you get FF7 on teh PSP? I can’t find a way....
And KH? Everything, the induction of Disney chars, clown shoes, and angsty children instead of angsty teenagers and adults. Thanks for you reading the review!!
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113 days ago
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Ah I see, well yeah I can see where the Disney Factor would be a draw back and yes in heighnsight looking at them being kids not teens does seem a little out of place. Well anyway we all have our opinions I guess. As for FFVII for the PSP, all you need to do is rip your FFVII PS1 CD’s and with the Popstation convert them for PSP Play. I believe after FW3.00 they added that feature. Anyway you can play PS1 games on the PSP with any custom firmware. If you need help on how to do it PM me.
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113 days ago
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4
Oh I think I need to make something clear on my first post. I play FFVIII and FFVII on my PSP but Eternal Arcadia I play on the Dreamcast, lol I don’t want people asking "How’d he do that?, is there a DC EMU?" No there isn’t one but I’d love if there was one on the PSP. I think the PSP’s graphics could handle it. My friend DR Gregman talked to me over how it would be impossible to have a DC EMU on the PSP...then again they have an N64EMU and PS1 EMU...so would it really be a stretch to have a DC EMU?
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No Avatar
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110 days ago
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5
ok so i have a psp which i believe is a thin one because i bought it last december. My PSP has 3.60 firmware right at the moment. I was wondering if someone could help me change the firmware so i could play my PS1 games. Thank you all
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103 days ago
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6
dude, i also beat the game in 18hrs with maybe around 15% missions complete
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