Crisis core review - 6/10

I love final fantasy. And as the first exclusive for PSP I had to give it a go.

First of all Crisis core is a prequel to the FF7 we all know and love with brilliant movie scenes and a strong story following SOLDIER A class Zack and his buddies. The downside is the story waffles about their honor as SOLDIER and some poem called Loveless.

Now lets get the strong point done. To do this I must explain the technical aspect of why the CGI pre-rendered scenes can look so bloody good. The PSP is a miniature powerhouse boasting a 333mhz processor, 32 mb RAM and a 480 x 272 display. This beast is nearly as powerful as a PS2, but its 1/5 the size. With its display being progressive, it is as technically "defined" as your standard CRT TV (which runs at 576i which is really only 288 pixels, the psps height contains 272 pixels).

With that over with each pre-rendered runs at full definition. With such wonderful detail level I was constantly re-loading my game to watch the sephiroth vs genesis scene over and over and over again because it was so bloody awesome.

I have included a link to this scene. However due to me thinking the english voice acting sounds like it was performed by pubescent uni students, and also to avoid spoilers I will provide the original Japanese scene:

<div class="show"><object width="425" height="350"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/R7yJ-hruqcM"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/R7yJ-hruqcM" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="425" height="350"></embed></object></div>

Now lets talk about the voice acting a bit more. This has to be one of the lowest points of the game. Im not saying it ruins the story but all the characters sound like they are in their late teens. I remedied this solution by playing through the Jap version the second time round, but to those who can't understand Japanese this isn't really an option.

Now the music is really awesome, a mixture of heavy rock and melodic guitar pieces with the occasional orchestral epics. Alot of combat has the same of heavy rock piece which gets annoying but there is always a volume button. This game features no covers from bands (from what I heard anyway), but its own music is pretty good, definitely a strong point.

Every character has a strong personality. Except for Zack, who seems like some 12 year old WOW player wielding a large sword who basically absorbs every other characters opinions, views and traits. It was nice seeing the back story of Sephiroth, even when he does show up and disappear for no explicit reason but to be behind the scenes.

Turn based combat has been replaced by real time combat with the DMW. (or digital mind wave) You are able to perform basic tasks such as attack, cast magic and do various materia based attacks using x while cycling your list of abilities in real time. But to do special moves and summons you need to rely on chance. The problem is any action game that requires chance throws strategy out the window.

Missions are on small maps with predictable combat areas which can be avoided. You can look at your map and basically know exactly where you need to go and not fight a thing while you hug the edges of the world to get there. The open world has disappeared and you are pretty much on rails with no exploration available to you.

Materia is no longer synergised in amour. You basically just equip them to get skills. You can fuse them in order to get higher stats or higher leveled materia.

Side-quests are no longer... side quests... but rather things you select from your menu at save points. This provides more of a casual game feel which is ok until you realize you can play through enough side quests by the end of the third mission you are able to pretty much 1 hit kill every other enemy in the game's storyline and the game no longer becomes a challenge but a cycle of casting a high level elemental spell (hell or tri) and drinking the occasional ether. The rewards for the deeper side-quests give you ridiculous stats and make you godlike and leave you feeling rather confused at the ending of the game.

Still I had fun with this game even if all my monotonous side-quest grinding did end up kicking me in the balls. If you own a PSP you really should buy this game, the story itself is good enough to at least dabble in it even if some of the characters are more monotonous then your mother telling you to clean your room.

-Lazyfire

Submitted by lazyfire 29/05/2008 5

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