Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII | Betrayed

Hi everyone and welcome to our place! 🙂

After so much talking yesterday here I am with another review… It seems that I just wrote that for the sake of it! Well, to be honest I still need to figure out how am I going to do the gaming side of this blog a little more entertaining than just reviewing games… To be honest I really don’t know! Nevertheless I really wanted to finish the Final Fantasy series and this is the last game I have for you! Moreover, I’ve already have a bunch of themed reviews to go out in April so for now I will stick with them and pray that until the end of April I can come out with a nice and more entertaining idea for the gaming side. However I will try to change a little bit the way I write these reviews… But it will take some time to adapt, so bear with me for the time being ok? :3 I did start changing some things such getting nice images for the rating It’s a small thing but I do think it makes a little difference and funny doesn’t it? Hope so >.<

Now, to the game! I’m going to talk about Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII. As you know my favourite game is Final Fantasy VII so when I learnt that a prequel with better graphics was going to come out for PSP I just got hyped… I just couldn’t stop myself! Well I liked the game so much that I ended up putting it on hold, then lost the save game and dropped it entirely and never touched it again! So, props to you Square Enix! You were able to make a crazy fan feel so bored that ended up dropping the game! But, ok… Let me talk a little more about the setting so you understand the background and then I’ll jump to the gameplay where I’m going to focus for this game (see? Just destroyed my normal structure! Trying to improve right here!)

You play as Zack, Cloud’s close friend in the past. He doesn’t get much screen time in Final Fantasy VII, but he ends up being a key character to understand Cloud past and to get all pieces together. The events happen 7 years before the main game and it touches in the events that Final Fantasy 7 addresses to build the past and give the main story a little more deepness. This way the story is about Zack as a 1st Class Soldier working for Shinra, how he meets Aeris and how they end up in a relationship, Wutai’s war and to the moment I played that was it. However, from what I know from Final Fantasy VII it probably also talks about how he ends up meeting Cloud, getting close to Sephiroth and a little more intel about what happened in Nibelheim 7 years ago. Well, as a fanboy as I am towards Final Fantasy VII this would be the greatest thing right? Well, unfortunately, in my opinion(of course), the execution was not the best! So, I’m going to start bashing this game right now because I feel betrayed!!! BETRAYED I TELL YOU!

Ups, this one is not from the right game… In a different note: I’m the only one hearing the “used to know” Gotye song right now? I am?… ok 😦

The first thing I’m going to talk are the side missions! There are a ton of them, which normally is good, but I found two main problems with them. First, there is no filter whatsoever. As what happened with Final Fantasy Type-0 when I was around lvl 30 I would be doing lvl 50 side quests. And you say to me, why don’t you just stop, continue the story and then come back to them? BECAUSE I CAN’T!!! I’m way into challenges and complete everything to just stay away from these side quests and yes I was able to pass these quests even with a difference of 20 lvls, but I’ll come back to that in a second. The other problem is… They are WAY too similar! They basically are dungeon crawling period. Yeah, if you read the description there is some “story” in there, but the thing is the side missions stories are really not that good. It’s basically: “Shinra wants to test you again!” or “We were still able to find some Wutai’s soldier and we need you to kill them!”. It ends up being boring! Especially when there are like 300 of them! Ah third reason (didn’t I just say two main reasons) oh well… I changed my mind. It’s way easy to hack the system. Basically all dungeons are similar and you know where the monsters will appear, so it didn’t take me too long to be able to do a dungeon without even fighting a monster besides the boss.

Oh… You don’t say… Seriously, is Zack the only person working in that building?

You are? Sucks to be you then 😦

Now, since most of the game is passed inside the dungeons of course they did a great job with them right? Well, no they didn’t. I don’t remember exactly, but you have way too low dungeon’s types for those 300 side quests .But ok, now you are thinking, well if they did such a few they must have done a terrific job with those ones! Nope, not really! The dungeon design is average to say at best, at least I felt most of them didn’t have any special detail… But, well, maybe it’s me after seeing them over and over and over again. So yeah, a ton of boring side quests set in the same boring dungeons! But hey! There are 300 Side Quests for you to do, so it’s great right?

BUT WAIT! There’s more! Let’s talk a little bit about the fighting gameplay shall we? It’s an action RPG, but a poor one! Ok, maybe not poor, but they could have done way better! They should just go with the fighting style they used in Final Fantasy Type-0. First of all you enter battles as a Turn Based Battle System which for me does not make much sense since the dungeons are not that big, so you could just put the monsters out there in the field as Final Fantasy Type – 0. The way you insert commands is also not great. You can add an amount of actions you want to do in battle, being them attack, magic or items. When you are in battle you push R1 and L1 to choose the action you want and push the action button. Since your battle area is not that huge it is a little difficult to change actions without receiving any damage. However, as any kind of action RPG you do have a dodge button and the moment you master that the battles will become way easier. I mean I was able to beat monsters 20 lvls higher than me without them hitting me once (if they did Zack would just die). Last, but not the least I really don’t understand the Special Attack they included in this game. You have a slot machine that from time to time will trigger, when it does you will see the slot machine working where you have the faces of the characters of the game (after you met them) depending when it comes out (based completely on luck) you do different attacks. So, you can have the luck to just burst a gigantic attack and win the battle right there, or you may be unlucky and just don’t do anything. Since I love strategy in RPG games I have to say that the game would be better without this feature. I would prefer not to have special attacks whatsoever.

You will kill a lot of these!

And these!

And these… Oh wait! No, not these! This is a pic so you can view the slot machine system!!!! Sorry, my bad!

In conclusion, I feel that Square Enix thought, well let’s grab Final Fantasy VII and just put out something out there! It doesn’t really matter how the game is because people will buy for being huge fans of the main installment. Well, they are right and Crisis Core is in the top of any Best Psp Games. However they did let down at least one huge fan and protector of Final Fantasy VII, me! The story is not that entertaining, the side quests are boring, the battle system not the best and when it comes to music + graphics I would say average (?). In the end I give Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII:

Chibi Zack got from Thanysa

As you can see, my review is a lot less structured than I was doing before, however I feel that I was able to give more of my personal point of view and basically transform this in a two friends conversation instead of a review! Tell me if you liked it or not! Your feedback helps a lot to understand if I’m taking a good step or not! And yes, you can be brutally honest with me! 😀

See You Soon! 😀