Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII

It's an exclusive prequel for one of the most revolutionary and groundbreaking titles to hit the Sony PlayStation back in 1997; Final Fantasy VII. So this has to be worth a look - right?

Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII for the Sony PSP is an experience that fans of Square-Enix's Final Fantasy VII and newcomers thirsty for portable role-playing action just cannot afford to miss. We've seen spin-offs of popular Final Fantasy titles before, but it's clear that Crisis Core deserves its own recognition.

Thrown once again into the dystopia that is Midgar, this time you are controlling Zack Fair – an overly enthusiastic member of SOLDIER, an elite team of Shinra soldiers. Zack is a cool protagonist to control, with crazy anime hair, and though a little over-confident in himself and immature, his heart is in the right place and you cannot slate Zack’s worth ethic - he is always ready for action, which in a JRPG is just what you thrive on, right? Zack plays a very brief part in Final Fantasy VII and fans of the old game who begin Crisis Core can already start to appreciate and engage with this new yet cutely familiar side-narrative. That being said, newcomers aren’t missing out on too much, as Zack never physically appeared in Final Fantasy VII. Both old timer’s and newbie’s - you can also expect an action-packed explosive role-playing game with a compelling story that should probably encourage you to rediscover the ‘sequel’ upon completion of this portable gem. 

The supporting characters seem to be the main focus of this entire story, and though you control Zack, he seems rather two-dimensional in that he works for SOLDIER, obeys orders and…That’s really about it, other than a small love interest. It seems as though you as the player just use Zack to mainly observe the incidents and stories that occurred prior to the events of Final Fantasy VII, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing, why? Because the narrative was one of Final Fantasy VII’s biggest strong points, and living through parts of the story again makes you reminisce, thirst for more plot and helps answer some of the indirectly unanswered questions that you would have been perhaps asking yourself during the 1997 game.

For those of us that remember the old characters, some of them are back making an appearance on Crisis Core. Aerith, Cloud – even the mighty Sephiroth, play big roles and keep up the continuity with its predecessor.  Some scenes are almost identical to those seen all those years ago in Final Fantasy VII, and we see the events from Zack’s perspective rather than Clouds. New gamers to this experience may miss out on the charm of these characters and their significant and complex stories may not mean much to them at this stage, but Crisis Core does enough to spoon-feed new players with a simple but effective battle system, a captivating story, great dialogue, miniature side missions and a strong backbone to the Final Fantasy VII experience, which they should then certainly explore.

Visually the game looks superb and pushes the Sony PSP’s capabilities considerably. In-game graphics are clean and the green tint over Midgar gives it that rundown feel that is needed to tie-in with Final Fantasy VII. The overall presentation is well polished and feels very cinematic. Cut-scenes are lovely to look at and are well rendered. The use of audio dialogue mixed with good voice acting is a nice touch; being able to hear Cloud and Sephiroth’s real voices gives the characters more identity than their graphically inferior future-selves.   

'...and neither will you be!'

The controls are very straightforward and responsive, it’s possible to rotate the camera with the shoulder buttons so you know where you’re going and don’t miss any treasure chests littered around the game world. During battles, cycling through spells and attacks with R and L, then using them with X is both simple and effective. Triangle and Square allow you to both block and dodge attacks from enemies.

The battle system is a little confusing to start with, and it doesn’t get any easier to understand the more you progress. The game uses something called a DMW (Digital Mind Wave) – which is a fruit-machine-style graphic that appears during battles for Zack’s limit break. Characters and numbers roll at high speed, and it’s a bewildering to understand just what’s going on at first – but you’ll soon work out the basics at least in that getting three of the same character enables Zack to use that particular persons limit break.  

You often find yourself spamming spells or constantly hacking at the enemy, pressing X repeatedly and hoping for the best. The spells and attacks are so asethically pleasing though that this is unlikely to bother you and is very enjoyable. The action is an interesting hybrid of turn based and real time, and this seems ideal on the portable system. There is an interesting addition to the menu this time around, whereby it’s possible to ‘fuse’ two different types of material together to form new ones – and it’s great to try different combinations to see which spells you can create.

'Crisis Core delivers some serious PSP eye candy'

Of course Crisis Core is on the Sony PSP, so there are plenty of save points to make sure if you need to turn the PSP off, it wasn’t long since you last saved. Also, there are around 300 side-missions that take around 1-5 minutes to complete, these side-missions also contain little to no storyline whatsoever, so are perfect for on-the-move gaming. 

The main story isn’t very long, but it’s the characters, the side-quests and side-missions that really bulk out Crisis Core. It’s entirely optional to stray from the main narrative, and if you complete the story too quickly, you can be sure you’ll be playing again to complete some of the other things you’re almost bound to have missed. Whether you’ve experienced Final Fantasy VII before or not doesn’t matter – if you have a PSP and you’re a fan of JRPG’s, purchasing and experiencing Crisis Core is a no-brainer.

Written by Tom Ragan

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