Final Fantasy 7: Crisis Core
Final Fantasy 7 Crisis Core is a prequel to Final Fantasy 7 created for the PSP.
The game features Zack, a first class soldier operative whose mission is to hunt down a group of traitorous soldiers lead by ex-first class soldier Genesis. Genesis and Zack’s mentor Angeal are first introduced in this game as characters that have a similar history to Sephiroth. The story fills in a huge gap in the FF7 storyline.
Many characters from the previous Final Fantasy 7 games are also included in this game. Cloud, Sephiroth, Aries, Hojo, and even the Turks including Cissnei who was only a minor character in the Japanese mobile phone prequel FF7: Before Crisis.
The game looks great for a psp title and to see all the classic locations from the original game recreated is great. The new soundtrack and voice-overs fit excellently as well.
The gameplay is a pretty big departure from other Final Fantasy games especially 7. The combat system is real-time with Zack able to attack, block, dodge, and use equipped materia.
Materia plays a big part in the game. You can get several types. Some let you use spells or attack skills, others increase your stats, and some give other additional benefits. You can equip 6 materia, and they level up through combat. Also you can use the materia fusion system to combine materia into new ones.
A major portion of the combat is the new DMW system. SP points are gained by attacking enemies and build up very quickly. As long as you have SP points (which you always should since I never had to farm for more) a slot like system will continually rotate in the top left of the screen. Each reel contains two values, a set of numbers from 1-7 and a set of character faces. Characters that you haven’t met are blacked out. Stats and bonuses are awarded to Zack when the numbers line up. When the faces line up, you’ll get a bigger slot that rotates in the middle of the screen the benefits of lining up things here is much bigger. Getting 2 or 3 of the same # will level up the materia that you have in that slot. If the number is 7 then Zack will gain a level. If you get 3 of the same character face graphics (or summons as sometimes the graphics change to summon characters), the character or summon will determine which special technique to perform on all enemies. If you haven’t met the character yet, then you’ll just do a typical limit break.
There are several mini games throughout the game and while the story mode is only about 15 hours long, the breadth of the game is in the missions system. The mission system is accessed from your menu at save points. There is a crazy amount of mission there. They don’t take long to complete a couple minutes each, but there’s well over 150 of them. They make for great, short gameplay sessions, and provide excellent rewards.
Overall the game is pretty linear (not including the missions) there are some side missions, but you really can’t go back and fourth at all. The last 4 or so hours of the game that show what was only briefly talked about in FF7 are completely straight forward, there’s no chance to go back so you better have everything done that you want. Because of this, it’s nice that they included the ability to visit shops through your cell phone so you can still stock up on items.
Finally the game has a New Game Plus mode that will allow you to start over once you finish the game with all the items and materia you’ve gained. The missions you’ve done are reset, which is a pain since they take FOREVER to get through them all.
Final Fantasy 7 Crisis Core is a great addition to the FF7 collection. It’s a completely different gameplay experience, but it’s great to play through the same environments, as FF7 and it’s an important part of the overall story to experience. It’s one of the best PSP RPGs for pick up and play, so if you like RPGs, even if you haven’t played FF7 this would be a good game for you.
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all ffvii’s are overrated LOL
I can agree with that, but it doesn’t mean they aren’t good games (except for DoC lol), they just aren’t the perfect masterpieces that gamers make them out to be.