Crisis Core: A Review

Ah, Crisis Core... the prequel to the bestselling and most famous Final Fantasy game ever. I finally bought it the other day, and I must say, I'm mostly pretty damn impressed with it.

For starters, let's talk about the graphics. The FMVs are top-notch, and the 'normal' graphics, while not perfect, are more than acceptable in my opinion. For an example of the lower limit of what I call acceptable, look at the 'normal' graphics of, say, Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days on Nintendo DS. Obviously, it's not fair to compare games on two different platforms, but this is only a rough comparison. So, overall, I'd rate Crisis Core's graphics as "great".

Next, the music. Bit of a disappointment here. It's not bad, for the most part, but it's not spectacular either. Most of the tracks in the game which I particularly like are, not entirely surprisingly, those which are remixed from tracks originally used in Final Fantasy VII. Still, the new tracks aren't bad... two of them even remind me of other FF tracks. One of them reminds me of Trail of Blood (VII), although judging from the official track listing no track is actually based on that, and another actually reminds me of the main recurring theme of Dissidia Final Fantasy, though I expect this is coincidental too. Overall, the music is "decent".

Gameplay. This is a biggie. The exploration side of it is pretty okay, although the camera control can be annoying at times. In battle, you have no control over the camera at all, which is a bit of a nuisance, and absent-mindedly attempting to rotate it can cause you to use battle commands that you really didn't want to because L and R control the command 'menu' in battle. Still, it's not too bad once you get used to it. As for battle itself, it does sometimes feel a little 'clunky', but again, this improves somewhat once you're used to it. I'd have to rate general gameplay as "good".

The Digital Mind Wave (DMW) system is called "innovative", and I guess I agree. Some people complain that it gets in the way and plays the game for you, and I see what they mean. One could argue that a lot of fights would be inordinately difficult without it - which you can see for yourself if hit with the DMW-halting Curse ailment - but is it really an argument in the DMW's favour to say that the game is designed to be more difficult without it? Either way, I don't have a huge problem with it. The only real irritation is that you have virtually zero control over it, apart from using certain Materia to adjust the odds of getting specific Limit Breaks. It doesn't change the odds of getting one at all, just the odds of which ones you get. My judgment of the DMW system is "good".

Missions. This is a... somewhat debatable issue. For the most part, they can be quite fun, but let's face it: the vast majority of them can be summed up as "Proceed through area. Kill some things. Check everywhere for treasure. Kill some things. Kill target enemies. Mission complete." With 300 missions, most of which are like this, it can quickly become tiresome. The best method by far is to do a bunch of them every once in a while; doing them too infrequently sets up a huge backlog, and doing tons and tons in one session gets really boring really fast. Missions, then, are "not bad".

Materia Fusion. This can be very satisfying, but also rather frustrating. It does become much less annoying with some understanding of the way it works, for which I can recommend nothing more highly than AbsoluteSteve's guide on GameFAQs. Still, if you're anything like me, you'll probably eventually just pick a handful of solid, reliable Materia to work on, and disregard the rest. Which is fine. Mug, Curaga, Barrier, MBarrier, DMW ones... then things I don't have yet, but intend to, like the insanely good Costly Punch. These are the bread-and-butter of the Materia system. Most of the rest are fancy gimmicks: interesting, but ultimately just for show because they work best only in certain situations, or are simply redundant becasue lesser Materia can have an effect nearly as good with greater ease. I rate Materia Fusion as "acceptable".

Finally, let's talk about the story and the characters. Obviously, this is the point in my review at which I must issue a...

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

S P O I L E R    W A R N I N G

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Zack is a fairly engaging protagonist. A little annoying at times, but pretty cool. Angeal is a bit of a filler character; sure, he's important to the plot, but he never really made that much of an impression on me. Sephiroth, the previously unknown good-guy version of him, is actually very likeable IMO. Sure, the insane vengeful villain we know and love (or hate) is awesome, but I really like the sane, slightly-cold-but-also-quite-friendly side of him. Good stuff. Next, there's Genesis. A lot of people seem to hate him, but I don't. Although constant LOVELESS recitals get a little tiresome, I actually quite like the guy. In some ways, I find him more interesting than Sephiroth. Aeris seems to be characterised rather differently from VII, and I'm not quite sure what to make of her cutesy version here. She's a tad annoying sometimes, too. Cissnei is a decent character, although a bit more development wouldn't have hurt. Finally, the last character I particularly want to discuss is Cloud. He's friendly, somewhat underconfident and uncertain (but not too much), and very much the sort of thing I was expecting. I'm very happy with how he is portrayed in this game. Characterisation overall comes out "pretty good".

Last, but certainly not least, the storyline. This is an unusual one, no doubt, but I have no great problems with the storyline. There are a couple of things that bug me, most of which are basically retcons. For example, how on earth could the war with Genesis be on the scale it is in this game and never be mentioned in the events of VII? Hopefully they would have the sense, if ever the fabled remake of VII was made, to build the retcons in without making them too intrusive. The whole subplot with Hollander and Project G smacks of story-cloning, but it works well enough to not be annoying. I don't know what else I want to say here, so I'll rate the story as "decent".

Oh, one more thing. The game has a few minigames scattered through it, most of which occur as storyline events. For the most part, these can be quite fun, so I rate them as generally "good".

In concusion, therefore, this game comes out as pretty darn good. There is something about the game that appeals to me that I cannot quite pin down, so my overall rating of it is higher than the sum total of the above ratings would suggest. If you were a fan of VII, then I personally recommend that you at least give this game a go. If you were a fanboy, you might like to steer clear. In fact, unless games with hack-and-slash combat fill you with horror, I would recommend that anyone give this game at least a chance.

One final thing: I'm not ashamed to admit that the ending made me cry quite a lot, even though I knew full well what was going to happen. I believe the only other time a game has ever made me cry was the very first time I played VII. Obviously, my repeated exposure (and the fact that it's now practically a meme to boot) has long since dulled my response to the scene in question - I daresay most readers will know which one I mean.