THE GOOD:
Visuals (world) look great. Not the greatest quality we've seen on the PSP, but pretty good. Sound engineering is moderate, as the game attempts, at least on this level, to keep some semblance of VII. The voice cast consists of actors, and not people gunning for a quick and easy paycheck. Casting isn't horrid, though there is a lack in range between the male voices. As always, Square's CG quality is up to par with its own standard.THE BAD:
Prequel does not feel relative to the original on many levels, and is almost completely a stand alone adventure. Alas, the directing isn't as masterful as it should be, and the focus of the game isn't even Zack Fair. This addition, as has been the case with all additions to any FF title, has profiteering written all over it. SUMMARY:
Final Fantasy VII - Squaresoft's magnum opus.
In the years ranging from 1995-1997 Squaresoft faced a problem. After having a falling out with Nintendo over the direction their Final Fantasy franchise would need to take as new console technology expanded, Squaresoft had come to the decision to take their Nintendo-based Final Fantasy franchise to the Playstation - with it's superior hardware capabilities over the N64 and data storage capacity of the CDROM format.
Now facing a challenge, Squaresoft had to create the next installment to the Final Fantasy series for a console in which an established fan base did not exist. They spent the next few years (not to mention obscene amounts of money) hard at work mastering all components of the game, and the use of PSX technology. When the game was finally released in Japan in 1997, it was expected to open the door to a new audience. It was never meant to set standards or break records, though they had hoped for the best. Their hopes would come to fruition as the records shattered. With just one game, Squaresoft had established supremacy over the RPG genre.
VII was a phenomenal success. It took the very definition of console based role playing games and rewrote it, breaking all previous boundaries and pushing them to limits never perceived possible. It set the standard pretty high, and many developers had to push much harder than they had before just to compete. The quality of role playing games sky rocketed as the competition tried to keep up, though Square maintained its status as top dog.
Reigning over the RPG genre, Square had all the time in the world to focus on breaking its own boundaries within the RPG universe. Up next was an experimental game that followed in the vein of the tactics based Ogre Battle gameplay system, and they went to work on Final Fantasy Tactics.
Tactics featured 2d sprites over a 3d, simple world design. Following Ogre Battle's 'grid system', the game featured a level of gameplay not previously seen in any FF game. The strategic elements were not the only focus of the game - it's plot was rich with character and history as the game told a tale somewhat reflective of our own history, with elements of the holy wars, inquisition, and conspiracy within church and government. As a result, the target age range had maintained since VII's release, and this game too was critically acclaimed.
VII featured character models that were miniature polygonal forms that were a throw back to past Final Fantasy games - featuring 2d 'chibi' style character sprites. (Chibi is a japanese word referring to child-like minature form) Tactics too, due to it's game design also featured this. Square knew they could do better, however. With Final Fantasy VIII, Square shifted its focus intensely on visuals - from world and character model design, and more importantly a huge leap in CG rendering quality. Final Fantasy VIII was released just a year later.
Problems were beginning to arise however - all their efforts on visual design had kept the creative department tapped out when it came to matching VII's plot, character, and world/cultural depth. The story itself stood on weak foundations, though many were willing to forgive it due to the success of VII, and the outstanding visuals offered by VIII. On top of that, the age range the game catered to was seemingly lowered (as the target audience shifted from 16-25+, to 16+. Associative character age ranges were brought down to match this, and thus the group majority of players won out, and any arguments did not affect overall review scores. Even so, Square felt the feedback from adult-based magazine and online reviewers, and so set out to create the next Final Fantasy in the spirit of the original SNES series.
Final Fantasy IX was released in 2000. The game concentrated on old school Final Fantasy storytelling, with a child-like, near Robin Hood level of depth. The game once again featured character designs resembling miniature chibi forms, though with a heavy take on style to keep players from feeling too distracted after VIII pushed the boundary of possibility. The game was also hailed a success, however many felt the 'roll back' affected the depth of the game needlessly, as many had knew, thanks to VII, that it was more than possible to add incredible depth to a game, regardless of it's more child-friendly nature. This was Square's last Final Fantasy game for the Playstation console.
In 2001, long time Square producer Hironobu Sakaguchi spearheaded a CG Final Fantasy film that
was geared toward both a Japanese, and eventual International theatrical release. For various reasons (a whole other lengty review in itself), the movie bombed. Funds cut horribly short, this would lead to Sakaguchi, Square's shotcaller and lucky charm, stepping down as executive producer to the Final Fantasy series. As a result of the financial loss to the Publisher/Developer itself, Square downsized dramatically.
As the Playstation 2 came to reign above all else in the console wars, and Square was still feeling the financial hurt, their next step was obvious - produce another Final Fantasy game that focused heavily on visuals, something to catch the eye and fill the Pub'/Dev's wallets with profit again as they began the road to recovery. Coinciding with the DVD release of the CG movie Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, Final Fantasy X was released in Dec.2001, and later internationally in 2002. X's design greatly reflected the focus that VIII had - visuals. Knowing that this would result in a lack of depth as VIII suffered, Square created X with a plot revolving around the main character's travel to the future to save the world from an enemy that consumed his homeland in the past. Through the exploration of the new future world, the character comes into contact and eventually joins a group of eventual friends, that are destined to face the threat of 'Sin' head-on. The main flaw here is not so much the plot depth, as it is the character depth. Fleshing out motivation and back story to these characters wasn't something done anywhere near what they should have been capable of, but this can be considered a loss due to the financial and time constraints the company felt they had to work under.
Having an established Playstation fan base to work with helped quite a bit, and after the history of VIII and IX, the lack of depth that X received was seemingly accepted by the majority, and as a result one could say that standard created by VII, and maintained by Tactics and exponentially furthered by the likes of a near-third party co-op release (which sadly aided in keeping it from hitting the mainstream)- 'Xenogears', was once again lowered, and finally accepted.
After X did its part to bring some financial gain to Square, long-time producer to the Final Fantasy series and shot caller Hironobu Sakaguchi decided to step down as executive producer. Soon after, Squaresoft was offered a merger deal with Enix, a once rival competitor for the RPG market (with the Dragon Quest games being able to put the hurt on Final Fantasy profits - resulting in the delay of FFVIII to keep from Dragon Quest harm). The merger went through, the giant had fallen.
Many feel after this merger, that Square pretty much took control (having a longer history of heavy hitters) over the majority of production, eventually influencing many Enix titles, even spawning remakes and sequels to some that otherwise likely would not have happened.
In order to establish the newly formed Square-Enix, the company needed to create heavy hitters under the Square-Enix flag. After the chaos that ensued the merger, with long-time staff leaving on both sides, the company set its sights on the most obvious jackpot chance, another Final Fantasy game. Whether it was due to the turmoil in the company interfering with the 'creative processes' that had otherwise always been present to partake in the design of Final Fantasy games, or simply because the risks were deemed as too great, rather than create an all new Final Fantasy, the company decided to make the first sequel to any individual Final Fantasy game. (Simultaneously they decided on a sequel to Final Fantasy Tactics - a small scale sequel for the Gameboy Advance, as they once again reopened the doors for deals with Nintendo)
Final Fantasy X-2 was an objective based game that based its success on the fans of X. Rather than take the traditional approach to plot structure, they decided to make proceeding in the game based on player choice of objectives. Players would be able to choose which missions to go on, when, where, and could effectively cut out 'optional' missions, even though they offered tidbits, and huge nuggets of plot-relevant information. The very style of the game too, was the subject of much criticism, as it clearly targeted a preferred market audience, the kind that revolve around trends. Regardless of the game's flaws, the profit they earned as a result of using X's label was more than enough to spur them to come up with new ways to profit from the Final Fantasy label.
Thus came the idea to expand on the Final Fantasy VII universe with an all CG sequel that, as you can imagine, was about as tacked on, plot-wise, as would become trend. Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children cheaply adds plot device after plot device to drag out a simple idea, that being another battle between Cloud and Sephiroth, the series' main character and arch nemesis. The irony here is though there was a lack of depth to this new addition, it was able to play off the depth established by VII, so as suck was naturally forgiven and embraced by critics, though there were plenty of rebutals from now-aged purists.
Since then the Final Fantasy series has been spontaneous in nature, ranging wildly in quality. Final Fantasy XI was a sub-par MMO (by MMO standards) focusing on random events in Ivalice (from FFT) that wished to keep up a continuous profit due to continued subscription fees. And yet again, Final Fantasy XII revisited Ivalice for yet another tale that maintained a marginally flat tone - played it safe keeping itself from highs and lows alike. Another off-shoot came in the form of Final Fantasy VII: Dirge of Cerberus.
Dirge of Cerberus acted as a stand alone side story involving Vincent Valentine, a vampire-reminiscent self-loathing loner who felt responsible for the loss of a loved one. The character was an optional member of the VII party who was never completely scripted into VII (due to deadlines). This side story takes place after Advent Children, and can be seen as an attempt to make a third person shooter reminiscent in style to the red leather clad melee monster that is Dante in Capcom's Devil May Cry, who also shares a similar ability to Vincent - that being the ability to transform into a demon-like form and dish out the hurt on a whole new level.
Having never created a third person shooter before, this project proved much too ambitious for Square, and the gameplay was considered a total failure in Japan. The International release featured a slightly improved control interface that made the game function more like a third person shooter. Plot-wise, Dirge could not completely feed off of VII's character depth as the story revolved around an under developed Vincent Valentine. Thus new characters would need to be introduced to keep the character intriging, giving him others to play off of. Sadly, these new characters were about as vapid and uninteresting as the usual mix of supporting characters Square had become content with creating since their fall from grace. The exceptions to this rule were the few supporting characters from VII that made cameo appearances, too few and far between, to help the plot make any coherent sense, and just to provide a link to the original game. Unfortunately, the plot itself was much too overblown for a side character like Vincent, and it's still sub-average playability kept this one from being a huge success.
Somewhere along the lines of Square attempting to figure out how it could pull itself together, and likely reform a single company again, the idea of a Final Fantasy VII remake was passed around. With the birth of the PS3, Square jumped on the chance to create a tech demo featuring a redone PS3 fueled introduction sequence from the original VII, this time featuring character designs from Advent Children. This was not publicly addressed as a promise for a full remake, as a venture like that could make or break them all over again - but it was something done to create the want for one.
Playing their cards as slyly as they could, they decided on a more affordable revisit, in the form of a smaller, PSP-based prequel, which tells the tale of Zack Fair, the SOLDIER operative that VII's Cloud Strike based his life upon when he suffered memory breakdown due to the introduction of Jenova Cells to his person.
Which brings us (finally, right?) to Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core.
Crisis Core promises players re-immersment into VII's world through scenarios revolving around
Zack Fair and his career as a SOLDIER operative, eventually leading up to the point of relevance
in Final Fantasy VII. However, before the game even sets itself up correctly it becomes clear the
focus of the game is clearly not Zack Fair, but a new addition to the series (who had a cameo in a
secret ending for Dirge of Cerberus), Genesis Rhapsodos.
Zack, a 2nd class SOLDIER operative, along with his mentor and 1st class SOLDIER Angeal Hewley,
are assigned early on to track and locate the awol SOLDIER operative, Genesis Rhapsodos after
he abandoned Shinra (a monopolistic super entity that achieves its powerful reach through the world's dependency on mako reactor based energy). It soon becomes evident that not only did Genesis abandon Shinra, but he also recruited other SOLDIER operatives to leave with him, and they stole many cloning devices and cloning research from Shinra's massive Biological Science Department.
In VII, Shinra forces have secured a majority of the planet's citizenry by making them dependant on
mako energy. The mako reactors convert energy, everyone is happy, big brother is watching, so to
speak. Though they label themselves an Electric Power company, Shinra is in fact a wide-reaching
militant force, with weapons research divisions ranging from mechanical to biological weaponry. In
Crisis Core, Shinra is still well established, though when the game takes place it is just during the final stages of a war between Wutai, and Shinra. Wutai has apparently revolted against Shinra's push for control in the area, and Shinra plans to take it by force.
The details of this war are never gone into, which is a real shame as there was an opportunity there to tie down events that are caused by this war, in VII. Instead, Zack and Angeal are dispatched to Wutai to take over the job Genesis abandoned. Nothing more than thinning some enemy troops in the area. For reasons not given, SOLDIER director Lazard follows the team. While there, the trio is attacked by red-clad soldiers. Zack is tasked with protecting Lazard and getting him to safety, while Angeal holds off the enemy. When they get to the evac' point, Sephiroth (who is another first class, and has already achieved a legendary service record in the Wutai campaign) is nearby - having defeated a few red-clad soldiers himself. Sephiroth removes the mask of a defeated enemy, and discovers the face of Genesis. He's been cloned, and Angeal is nowhere to be found.
Returning to Shinra HQ, Lazard informs Zack and Sephiroth that Angeal Hewley has deserted Shinra
and has joined Genesis. From then on, Zack is tasked through SOLDIER assignments to uncover
information regarding the desertion, and track down Genesis and his forces, as well as shutting down any rogue operations.
Through these mission encounters Zack often pairs up with Tseng, another VII character who is part
of the Shinra Turks - a shady Gestapo like group who is tasked with the kind of assignments Shinra
wouldn't want anybody to know about. The two often are a few steps behind Genesis, but uncover
enough information to discover what's going on.
In Final Fantasy VII, we learn that at some point in ancient times, an alien creature descended from the heavens and crashed upon the planet, leaving a huge crater in its wake. From this crater arose a being that resembled humans. In these ancient times existed a race known as the Cetra - these spiritualists could communicate with the planet through the 'lifestream' - the universal flow of spiritual consciousness that all life is derived from. This being befriended the Cetra, though hid it's malicious intent until it knew enough about them to strike. After an epic battle, the being they called Jenova was defeated. Years later, in VII, we discover that Shinra's bioligical weapons division has acquired the remains of Jenova through excavation.
In Crisis Core, we learn that the Bio-division's lead scientist Dr. Hollander was put in charge of a project that would use what they thought were the cells of an ancient, to create a superior form of SOLDIER, which would aid the Shinra in the expansion of its mako reactor prospects. (Essentially taking over the world by creating the dependency on mako energy, destroying all who'd refuse)
Under Hollander, we discover that Genesis' was created by mapping Jenova cells upon a fetus when
in the womb. As a result, Genesis was born with phenomenal abilities. It wasn't until years later, during a training session between Angeal, Genesis, and Sephiroth, that Genesis injures himself. Instead of healing however, Genesis starts to degrade. At this point Hollander is called in. Since he was in charge of the Genesis project, he would have the answers to curing Genesis of his degrading state. Unfortunately, Hollander has no cure. Soon after, Genesis abandons SOLDIER, taking plenty of others with him to whereabouts unknown.
Genesis gone, backed by a small army of Ex-SOLDIER operatives with a degrading mental and physical state, and the discovery of Genesis clones. Shinra pulls damage control on the situation, firing Hollander from his position in an effort to sweep the situation under the rug. As Zack continues tracking the situation we realize (all too soon) that the focal point of the game was never Zack to begin with, though you play as him through the whole game.
In a nutshell, the scenario with Genesis plays out through 90% of the game, with a few bits in between dipping into Zack's love interest, then the last few bits at the end of the game being the only relevant material leading up to VII. Recall that this game was labeled by Square as a prequel to VII, to be perfectly honest it is just a side-story that happens to take place chronologically before VII. By those standards,
if you just wanted to be plain stupid about it  , Final Fantasy X is as much a prequel/side story to VII as this game, as that game contains the ancient relative of President Shinra, who came to the planet featured in FFVII. settled, and eventually started up the Shinra Electric Power company. :\
Keep in mind the history of Square's degredation in mind when you think of this game, and imagine
it had anything to do with being a true prequel to VII. Other than characters, and just a few scenarios that take place, the only thing actually tying it to VII's feel at all is a few characters, and a few world areas that half of the time resemble the old VII locations, and other times are drab and dull zone areas you do your grunt-work battling and leveling in. IE: Fort Condor is a barren sandy maze. There's open sky, dirt, and rocky walls. If you've played FFXII, then imagine those explorative field zones, shrunken down for hand-held convenience. There's nothing much to these field zone designs, and sadly, you will be returning to them multiple times.
The game offers some form of extra tasks through "mission mode". Walk up to any save point and you
can access missions in which Zack is tasked with, well, killing the big baddy in one of the many recurring field zones. Missions are based on chapter-like segments, wso completing a whole chapter can take you through that same set of dungeons over and over until completion. There isn't much in the way of any depth or story revelations through these mission modes, as they serve as the only means to level up Zack when not following a mission, and an alternate way to earn money (called 'gil'), and to unlock potentially powerful equipment items. Mission chapters are labeles from very easy to very hard, yet the one thing they all have in common is horrendous repetition. No game's extra content should be a chore to play, let alone content that is supposed to act as the filler that spurs the player on to explore the game-world in its entirety.
Zack's battles are fought 1-on-many for the most part. There isn't a party system in this game, you'll be playing as Zack exclusively. The game's combat system is both simple and flawed. Zack's got an MP bar that dictates how much magic points Zack has to spend on spell casting, an AP bar that dictates how many action points he can spend on command actions (special attack abilities that can involve inflicting status effects on the enemy, to rolling out of harms way), the usual HP bar showing how much health he has remaining, and the DMW wheel. The DMW wheel is a new feature unlike anything Square's done in the past in any action game, though at first glance it might seem similar to the roulette wheels of previous FF games. This wheel however, is not controllable at all. It constantly runs off of SP, which is obtained from defeating enemies. The DMW spins and comes to a stop of its own accord at random - allowing the use of special 'limit break' and 'limit verge' attacks, as well as summon monsters (unlocked later), and the leveling up of both Zack, and his magic casting 'materia'- equipable orbs that each have their own magical ability, from cure spells to elemental and status spells. Given the DMW wheel spins, stops, and spins again of its own whim, it can prolong and interrupt battles that would otherwise be short and simple. When the DMW wheel stops, you may also be granted temporary invincibility, or have no restrictions to MP and AP use, may become invulnerable to status changes, and other aids. These aid bonuses I feel, do not compliment the nature of an action OR RPG, as the player is supposed to have direct control over the tactics used in battle. With the DMW wheel, you may be squaring off to take on a big bad boss - having trained and leveled up for hours, only for the DMW wheel to grant you invulnerability in the fight. It's a far too overbearing system that is neither innovative, nor very intelligent in design. Though it may seem that leveling up is random, however, there is some sort of underlying experience system in place to keep players leveling up as they take on harder challenges. The problem remains though, when you initially earn enough exp to have leveled up, you still have to keep fighting battles until the DMW decides to actually level up. The extra health and stat growth you earned is given to you not when you directly earn it, but only if you endure more repetetive battles to obtain it.
Battles play out somewhat smoothly, aside from the intrusive DMW wheel. Using default controls, the
X button executes the selected action from the action bar, the circle button acts as a cancel button (to exit item menus), the square button sends Zack into an evasive roll (which expends a bit of AP), and the triangle button guards, absorbing a certain amount of damage from incoming attacks. Zack moves freely around the small and sometimes cluttered battle zone with the analog nub, or the directional buttons. L and R serve as cursor selection over the action bar. The action bar starts from left to right, from the basic 'attack' command, through Zack's equipped materia (ie: fire spell, thunder spell, cure spell, etc), and finally to the item list, in which Zack can use potions and other items to aid himself in battle. The action bar can take some getting used to, as it can require the player to stop observing the battle in order to properly select the appropriate spell/command/item. Since the battles play out in real time, it can be a pain to cycle through actions in the blink of an eye to use the appropriate spell. A radial (or web) menu would have worked wonders here, and it would have freed up the use of one of the hat buttons, but it would seem Square wished to give the scheme the illusion that it was related to VII's 'active time battle' to some degree. Given Zack has the ability to dodge attacks, there are also attacks in the game that cannot be dodged at all (likewise, Zack's limit break/verge attacks are unblockable as well). That in mind, there is a small deal of customization involved with materia setup and item collecting.
As for the items themselves, the game has a shop feature that is available at all times from the main menu. Rather than being able to visit stores as in traditional FF games, Zack must obtain 'store ID's to be able to virtually access stores and magically summon up the items purchased. Initial stores consist of a short list of support items, such as potions. To obtain other store ID's, Zack must progress to certain missions in mission mode and obtain the store ID as a treasure item, or other reward. So here we have all these elements of gameplay attempting to compliment the game's battle system and playable depth, yet the
effect is mostly nullified when the battles are both repetetive, and generally uninspired. (You won't forget the DMW wheel either)
As far as sound engineering goes, many sound effects from the game are adequate, and quite a few menu sounds have been resampled from VII's sound vault to help aid the game in appearance to VII. Nothing over the top, simple and it works. The music however, is far removed from the thematics composer Nobuo Uematsu created when he scored Final Fantasy VII. In place of any masterfully charming compositions we have a new soundtrack that is grounded in detached electric-jazz fusion and mild rock. There are a few renditions of prior VII songs, most memorable are select boss battle themes, yet these renditions seem worse in quality than the midi converted songs that appeared on the PC version of Final Fantasy VII - CC's renditions having many notes that miss the mark, and a tempo that feels much too rushed. There's an air of 'cheap n' easy' that's really unforgivable considering the quality of work it was based on. The rock cuts aren't horrible, but they aren't anything at all inspiring. There are quite a few basic riffs repeated, and no real connection to mood is ever prevalent when they clearly should be. There are only a few songs that are keyed to play at particularly emotional scenes in the game which try to make sense. These are easily more memorable than the rest, yet even they don't sound like they truly belong in the world Square made back in 97.
The CG quality of the FMV cutscenes is one of the few things that Square has improved over the course of the years. It's hard to believe how far the jump in CG quality has come in just 10 years, though if you think about it, just 10 years ago the internet was a significantly smaller place. Crisis Core's CG's are used at the most important points in the story, allowing the player time to sit back, let their thumbs rest, and watch some pretty cool looking scenes.
As for the plot of the game, as it revolves entirely around the Genesis character, we are forced to look into this new character's motives, background history, and come to a few conslusions: do we like his character, should we like this character, what spurs him to act the way he does, how does his actions affect the series? Firstly, Genesis' background is as shallow and lackluster that it can be summed up in a few sentences. He was born, he was inducted into SOLDIER, he went rogue and became Shinra's (and thus Zack's) problem. Not much more than that is EVER clued in to the player - keep in mind this character is the focal point of the whole game. We know he was the product of a similar experiment to Sephiroth, yet to have to come to the conclusion that his back story and motives, without explanation, were on par with Sephiroth's is completely absurd. Angeal was a similar product of experimentation, and we have more insight into his character than we do of Genesis. You even meet Angeal's parents.
Meanwhile, while the story revolves around this character, plenty of great opportunities to expand upon the history already established in FFVII are passed up. The war with Wutai isn't gone into any particular detail (Zack's mission there is absurd to boot), Wutai aside, other regions of the world who had opposed Shinra were not revisited at all (like Coral Town), yet Square preferred to focus on this new character, a completely detached element to the VII-verse, and even when that whole plot element is over, we still aren't given any reason to give a damn about it. Thankfully by that time, it's the end of the game and we can play out the last remaining scene that retells a particularly important event we first saw in a flashback sequence in Final Fantasy VII.
Overall the game isn't completely horrible. But it would be a lot easier to see its failing if it were a new game entirely, with no relation to VII. Change the character names, designs, and little else and you've got a lot of problems concerning character backgrounds, event history, and a general lack of information regarding why characters chose to do certain things. In essence it wings by simply because it refers to VII as much as possible. It's playable, as at one point in the game or another, all the major plot areas have at least 1 sentence of explanation. That however, shouldn't be enough for both long-time VII fans, and newcomers. Given the quality of the game it mooches from, and the history i've provided at length, it's fairly easy to determine how and why this game is the way it is. At that, my final score for the game is 3.8/5. Not the worse game known to man, and not the best PSP game out there. It has its problems, had all the time to fix them, yet was content to focus on other things (and other characters, like Genesis, who hasn't played an important role in any other VII-related off shoot).
For those of you that have played it, and are stuch with questions the game didn't provide answers for (especially if you've never played VII before), we welcome you to our Crisis Core discussion forum. Feel free to post your questions or comments about the game there. There are quite a lot of people willing to help you there. |
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