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Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII
By qazimod | June 25, 2008
You’d think it would be ridiculous to develop a game for a handheld that’s based on a blockbuster RPG spanning hundreds of hours and several discs, and when it was announced that Square Enix were planning a PSP game chronicling a sidestory in the FFVII universe, no-one knew quite what to expect. However, on Friday 20th June gamers in the UK were able to get their hands on Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core, and - with my preorder slip in hand and my complimentary art card in the bag - I prepared to lose myself in that universe all over again…
It must be said, however, that I seldom get on with RPGs of this ilk. Facing random battle after random battle just because the developers can’t be bothered to judge the pace at which a player progresses through a stage always felt a bit cheap and tacky, turn-based activity is arguably necessary for the micromanagement of your items and magic but it doesn’t always convey a sense of fluidity, and sometimes you feel like you’re playing a series of combat sequences bookended with cutscenes. However, Crisis Core puts in a lot of effort to please detractors of this kind of battling. Whilst I’ve already suffered the odd humiliating defeat at the hands of a boss, the combat in the game feels fluid and engaging at times; you can break from attacking to execute roll-dodges that help avoid certain enemy turns, the DMW slot machine does it’s best to keep you in the fight by occasionally granting you extra HP, MP or AP, and the inventory system is easily browsable: everything you need is little more than a few button presses away, and you won’t get drowned in menus trying to decide what you want to do.
The presentation of the story in the game is an unavoidably mixed compromise. For every full blown FMV with nice voice-acting and dramatic camera shifts, there are several moments where you find yourself wading through reams of text whilst the characters silently converse within the confines of the game engine. Of course, you get used to it quickly enough, but it’s hard to pretend that the shift from polished FMV to textual rambling isn’t a bit jarring at times. Whilst these scenes have their faults (including unavoidable hardware concessions: disc-access delays between scenes can be offputting but they are necessary to anyone who is playing the game from the UMD) it’s worth commending the characterisation in this game: you play FFVII bit-part Zack, and whilst he seems a bit goofy at times, he quickly shows a lot more charisma than the painfully boring Cloud “leave me alone you’re all gay I hate you” Strife of the PlayStation original - admittedly, Cloud was probably designed to be as blank a slate as possible, no doubt to encourage player-projection, but Zack’s more established characteristics are arguably preferable.
Another nice side-effect of the PSP’s storage is that the in-engine battles don’t bounce you out of the action like they would in, say, FFIII for the DS. With a much smoother transition between exploration and combat, you don’t have to recall where you were thinking of heading before you were so rudely interrupted. It’s not exactly a new innovation, but on a handheld platform (where such feats have traditionally been harder to pull off due to hardware concessions) it’s preferable to the traditional arena-spawning practises of games such as Golden Sun, or the GBA and DS Final Fantasy ports. There will always be detractors that say that, for all it’s efforts to compensate and please them, battles still operate within the kind of pseudo-turn-based format that feels outdated next to something like The World Ends With You’s more arcade-style approach, but for people who have desperately tried to love this type of battle system, these efforts aren’t wasted.
Since these are immediate impressions, I’m not going to jump to conclusions about storyline: what matters is how the game looks, feels and plays, and whilst the presentation suffers slightly as a result of the host hardware, the narrative and gameplay conspire to deliver an experience that will please any fan of the original. Others might not warm to the plot themes and characterisation so quickly, but as a handheld endeavour the gameplay makes a strong attempt at keeping things accessible enough to play through in quick bursts, but tactical enough to keep you entertained whilst killing time. Such an ambitious title was never going to be perfect, but fans of the PSOne original should find plenty here to keep them entertained.
Topics: Sony PSP |
August 10th, 2008 at 1:23 pm
[…] can progress further and - yes - battle countless more enemies. Me, I can’t stand most JRPGs; Crisis Core, for all my gushing first impressions, felt like a bit of a drag after a while, and the last game […]